Respiratory Diphtheria in a 16-Year-Old Who Developed Multiple Life-Threatening Complications.

Diphtheria is a contagious disease with high mortality. Although the global prevalence has been decreasing, the immigration of certain populations with suboptimal vaccination coverage has contributed to its resurgence in developed countries. We report a 16-year-old Afghan male with acute respiratory distress and life-threatening complications, including fulminant myocarditis with cardiac arrhythmias and neurologic complications.

Multimodal Approach to Predict Neurological Outcome after Cardiac Arrest: A Single-Center Experience.

The aims of this study were to assess the concordance of different tools and to describe the accuracy of a multimodal approach to predict unfavorable neurological outcome (UO) in cardiac arrest patients. Retrospective study of adult (>18 years) cardiac arrest patients who underwent multimodal monitoring; UO was defined as cerebral performance category 3-5 at 3 months. Predictors of UO were neurological pupillary index (NPi) ≤ 2 at 24 h; highly malignant patterns on EEG (HMp) within 48 h; bilateral absence of N20 waves on somato-sensory evoked potentials; and neuron-specific enolase (NSE) > 75 μg/L.