Does training improve writer's cramp? An evaluation of a behavioral treatment approach using kinematic analysis.

Patients with writer's cramp (WC) show uncontrollable muscle co-contractions of agonists and antagonists and unusual postures of the upper limb during writing; their handwriting is inefficient and exhausting. Currently the treatment of choice is to inject botulinum toxin in selective hand muscles. However, this treatment has two drawbacks: it is short-lasting and may be associated with adverse side effects.

[Tuberculosis control in lower Franconia 1995 - 2001. Case-finding and treatment outcome].

Background: How useful is active case-finding for the controlling of tuberculosis (TB) in Lower Franconia? What treatment outcome is being achieved and which factors reduce this success?

Methods: All 867 TB cases reported to the public health departments in Lower Franconia between 1995 and 2001 were used as anonymous data for a prospective study.

Results: Average age, gender, country of origin and rates of bacterial resistance of the patients coincided to a large degree with the data of the DZK study. The percentage of resettlers from the former Soviet Union with TB was, however, almost double.

[Preventive percutaneous radiotherapy for avoiding hyperplasia of the intima following angioplasty together with stent implantation].

Purpose And Background: Interventional radiologic procedures play an important role in the management of peripheral arterial occlusive disease. Percutaneous transluminal interventions as angioplasty (PTA) and implantations of metal-stents injure the wall of the blood vessels resulting in hyperplasia of the intima and media. In spite of adequate anticoagulation therapy restenosis and reocclusion frequently occur.

[Invagination in adults].

Intussusceptions in adults are rare. With the increasing use of sonography, CT and improved methods for examining the small bowel, they are now diagnosed more frequently before operation. If one considers the possibility, acute invaginations can be readily diagnosed by sonography or barium examination; the CT appearances are pathognomonic.

[Transhepatic balloon dilatation of the ductus choledochus and the removal of choledochal calculi].

In eight patients with stones in the bile duct, the concretions were removed percutaneously; in six, they were pushed into the duodenum following dilatation of the papilla and in two patients they were removed percutaneously by a transhepatic route using a Dormier basket. In two patients a stenosis at a choledocho-jejunostomy was successfully dilated by a percutaneously introduced balloon catheter. In five patients stenoses due to tumours of the bile duct were dilated percutaneously and an endoprosthesis introduced.

Iodine-induced hyperthyroidism after contrast media: animal experimental and clinical studies.

The healthy thyroid can adapt to an iodine excess in many different ways. The autoregulation mechanisms may, however, fail in a diseased thyroid and severe hyperthyroidism may result. There must be autonomous portions of the thyroid functionally present to cause an iodine-induced hyperthyroidism.

[Anterior wall infarct in an 18-year-old patient with Hodgkin's disease. Possible relation between mediastinal irradiation, accelerated arteriosclerosis and vincristine chemotherapy].

An 18-year-old male patient with Hodgkin's disease, having undergone radiotherapy to the mediastinum two-and-a-half years previously, developed symptoms of an acute myocardial infarction within three hours of a vincristine injection (the first course of vincristine chemotherapy had been finished eight days previously). Invasive investigation after three weeks revealed single-vessel occlusion of the anterior interventricular branch with an anterior-wall aneurysm. The most likely cause of the coronary heart disease in this patient is changes in the anterior interventricular branch resulting from the mediastinal radiotherapy.

[Effectiveness of radiation therapy following breast-preserving surgery in breast carcinoma].

Two patient groups submitted to different treatment schemes--with and without postoperative radiotherapy--were investigated in a retrospective study in order to find out the frequency of recurrences after conservative surgery in mammary carcinoma of the stages T1 and T2. Postoperative radiotherapy following to conservative surgery was found to be the most efficient method to prevent recurrences in patients presenting negative as well as positive axillary lymph node findings. During a follow-up period of 26 months, there was only one recurrence in 50 patients treated by conservative surgery and subsequent radiotherapy, whereas the recurrence rate of patients not irradiated after surgery was 23%.

[Iopromide, a new contrast medium for angiography. Clinical study and comparison with other low-osmolar contrast media].

In a multi-centre randomized double-blind study the ionic dimer ioxaglate was compared with the nonionic monomer iopromide. In a second randomized double-blind study iopamidol was included in the trial. It was shown that with low-osmolar substances sensitivity to pain and warmth occurred to only a slight extent, whether the contrast medium was ionic or non-ionic.

[Primary duodenal carcinoma. Clinico-radiologic study].

Primary carcinoma of the duodenum represents about 0.35% of all gastrointestinal carcinomas and is thus a rare disease. The radiological diagnosis of a duodenal origin is made more difficult by the close proximity of the pancreas, biliary system, right kidney and transverse colon.