Step Ladder Expansive Cranioplasty: A Novel Perspective in Cranial Volume Augmentation Surgery.

 In face of a refractory raised intracranial pressure (ICP), surgeons most commonly resort to decompressive craniectomy (DC). Procedure leaves an unprotected brain underlying the craniectomy defect and Monro-Kellie doctrine: disrupted. Different variants of hinge craniotomies (HC) have been used with clinical outcomes comparable to DC as single stage alternatives.

Novel Approach to Medullary Oblongata Cavernous Hemangioma.

We report the case of a 31-year-old male patient who presented with complaints of left upper and lower limb weakness with giddiness, imbalance while walking, hiccups, nasal regurgitation, and history of difficulty in swallowing. He was evaluated and diagnosed to have a space-occupying lesion in the left medulla oblongata-cavernous hemangioma. He underwent suboccipital craniotomy and excision of the lesion.

Correlation of histomorphologic prognostic markers and proliferative index with loss of heterozygosity 1p/19q and MGMT status in diffusely infiltrating gliomas.

Background: Loss of heterozygosity (LOH)1p/19q, and epigenetic silencing of O(6)-methylguanine-DNAmethyltransferase (MGMT) gene, displayed promising role as predictive and prognostic markers in brain tumours. The present study correlated both with conventional histomorphologic prognostic markers and proliferative index in diffusely infiltrating gliomas (DIG).

Methods: Tissues from 45 patients were evaluated for LOH1p/19q using polymerase chain reaction based microsatellite analysis; and for MGMT using immunohistochemistry.