MRI assessment of post-traumatic spinal instability.

The imaging evaluation of patients with spinal trauma has evolved over the past decades, and there has been particular interest in the concept of instability, to predict which a series of criteria have been proposed. We retrospectively evaluated the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in 50 patients with post-traumatic spinal instability according to Denis's three-column method, Daffner et al.'s radiographic criteria, and Oner et al.

Technical note: CT scout views of the cervical spine in severely head-injured patients.

The objective of this study was the validation of a CT multiprojection scout view method for the evaluation of cervical spine integrity in severely head-injured patients. Following brain CT, 130 consecutive patients underwent anteroposterior, laterolateral, and 45 degrees right and left oblique scout views of the cervical spine. The method allowed direct and prompt detection of traumatic lesions of the cervical spine in ten cases without moving the patients from the scanner table.

Mucormycosis after bone marrow transplantation: report of four cases in thalassemia and review of the literature.

We report four cases of mucormycosis that occurred among 711 patients who underwent BMT for thalassemia, and review 18 additional cases among BMT recipients that were reported in the English-language literature. All these patients were polytransfused and were in advanced phase of disease with severe acquired hemochromatosis. The sites of infection were sinonasal, rhinocerebral-pulmonary, pulmonary and pulmonary-central nervous system.

One-step purification by high-performance liquid chromatography of retinal S-antigen.

A number of subsequent chromatographic techniques are commonly used, over a period of a few days, in order to obtain pure retinal S-antigen (S-Ag), a 50,000-dalton molecular weight protein with strong uveitopathogenic properties. A rapid high-performance liquid chromatographic technique employing a TSK-G3000 SWG gel-filtration column is described for the purification of bovine S-Ag. This single chromatographic step produced S-Ag preparations of high purity and recovery when compared to the conventionally isolated S-Ag.