The value of clinical characteristics from a standard questionnaire to discriminate cardiac from neurological syncope in the elderly.

Objectives: To identify signs and symptoms to differentiate cardiac from neurological syncope in patients over 70 using a standardized questionnaire.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Five short-stay units in a French university hospital.

[Bickerstaff's brainstem encephalitis].

Introduction: Bickerstaff's brainstem encephalitis represents a differential diagnostic that must be discuss with meningoencephalitis with ophtalmoplegia, ataxia and confusion.

Exegese: A 26 year-old woman presented a Bickerstaff syndrome. A severe disturbance of consciousness had lead to admission in intensive care unit with mechanical ventilation.

Vagal nerve stimulation in tuberous sclerosis complex patients.

This is an open-label, retrospective, multicenter study to determine the outcome of intermittent stimulation of the left vagal nerve in children with tuberous sclerosis complex and medically refractory epilepsy. The records of all children treated with vagal nerve stimulation were reviewed in five pediatric epilepsy centers to locate those with tuberous sclerosis complex who had been treated with vagal nerve stimulation for at least 6 months. These patients were compared with (1) a series of patients obtained from the literature, (2) 10 similar control patients with epilepsy obtained from a registry of patients receiving vagal nerve stimulation, and (3) four published series of tuberous sclerosis complex patients whose epilepsy was surgically managed.

An isochromosome 6p in a primary meningeal malignant melanoma.

The rearrangement of chromosome 6, particularly the deletion of 6q, has been observed in human malignant melanoma with or without brain metastases. The isochromosome 6p has also been described. In this study, we report the cytogenetic analysis of a primary malignant melanoma of the central nervous system.

[Antineoplastic chemotherapy and Wernicke's encephalopathy].

Background: Wernicke's encephalopathy is usually seen in alcoholic adults. It is rare in childhood and usually discovered in a context of several pathological events. We report here a typical case of a teenager.