Surgical intervention and heparin-anticoagulation improve prognosis of rhinogenic/otogenic and posttraumatic meningitis.

It is still controversial, whether early surgical removal of infectious material and heparin-anticoagulation to reduce vascular complications will improve outcome in acute meningitis. In the present pilot-study 40 patients with acute or delayed post-traumatic or oto-/rhinogenic purulent bacterial meningitis were analysed for neurological outcome by using the Glasgow outcome score (GOS) and the Tuthill functional score; patients were treated either by early surgical revision of the septic focus (Group 1, within 6 days, n = 15), late surgery (Group 2, later than 6 days, n = 19), or no surgery at all (Group 3, n = 6). All patients, independent of surgical approach, received therapeutic heparin-anticoagulation.

Vitrectomy and Whipple's disease.

We diagnosed Whipple's disease from the vitreous aspirate of two patients who underwent vitrectomies . In one case, the vitrectomy specimen would have indicated the diagnosis three years before the jejunal biopsy was performed had the appropriate PAS stain been used. In the second case, the PAS-positive macrophages were identified at the time of surgery.

Exudative retinal detachment in hemoglobin SC disease.

A 21-year-old black man with hemoglobin SC disease had a unilateral exudative retinal detachment. A large area of sea fan neovascularization was identified in this eye at the superotemporal border of the detachment; no retinal holes were present. Following closure of the neovascularization by argon laser photocoagulation using feeder vessel technique, the retina flattened and the exudation cleared.

The pH tolerance of rabbit and human corneal endothelium.

The endotheliums of rabbit corneas were perfused in an in vitro perfusion specular microscope up to 3 hr with solutions varying in pH from 3.5 to 10.0.