Incidence of hospital-admitted severe traumatic brain injury and in-hospital fatality rates in a Pacific Island country: a 5-year retrospective study.

Background: Epidemiology of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is poorly defined in the Pacific region, including in New Caledonia. The aim of this study was to assess the incidence, causes and outcome of hospital-admitted severe TBI in the whole population of New Caledonia.

Methods: A retrospective study on patients with severe TBI admitted to the only trauma centre during the 5-year period (2008-2012) was performed.

Intranasal lidocaine plus naphazoline nitrate improves surgical conditions and perioperative analgesia in septorhinoplasty surgery.

Background: Septorhinoplasty is a traumatic procedure that is associated with epistaxis and postoperative pain. The primary objective of this randomized double-blind controlled trial was to determine whether intranasal 5% lidocaine plus naphazoline decreases postoperative pain and lessens the use of rescue analgesics.

Methods: After induction of general anesthesia and laryngeal topical anesthesia with 5% lidocaine, 28 adult patients, scheduled to undergo septorhinoplasty, were randomly assigned to one of two groups, either topical intranasal saline 20 ml (control group) or intranasal 5% lidocaine plus naphazoline solution 0.

[Delayed tamponade and traumatic myocardial contusion: evaluate the risk after blunt chest trauma].

Cardiac contusion is frequently found in patients with blunt chest trauma. It is important to note that even if there is a low incidence of pericardial effusion, iterative echocardiography should be used to provide essential information for the diagnosis of cardiac tamponade which can be life-threatening during hospitalisation. The case has been reported of a 17-year-old patient with blunt thoracic trauma in whom the introduction of anticoagulant treatment induced a delayed cardiac tamponade with myocardiac failure 3 weeks after a cardiac contusion.

Diagnosis of neuromuscular blocking agent hypersensitivity reactions using cytofluorimetric analysis of basophils.

Background: Immunoglobulin E (IgE)-mediated hypersensitivity reactions to neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBA) are common and life threatening. Basophil activation based upon the expression of CD63 in the presence of specific allergens was found to be of importance for the diagnosis of IgE-mediated hypersensibility.

Methods: The Basotest was evaluated for the diagnosis of NMBA in 47 patients with proven NMBA anaphylaxis, 40 atopic subjects nonallergic to NMBA and five healthy volunteers.

[Iatrogenic retroperitoneal haematoma after emergency femoral vein catheterisation].

We report a iatrogenic case of retroperitoneal haematoma consecutive to an emergency femoral venous catheterization. The indication of the catheterisation was a hemorrhagic shock after a dilapidating traumatism of leg in an obese patient in whom peripheric venous access was impossible and vascular filling urgent. In spite of the existence of an initial reassuring blood backward flow, a retroperitoneal haematoma had been constituted gradually and explained an absence of haemodynamic improvement in spite of the surgical haemostasis and an adapted intravascular filling.