Organ System Network Disruption in Nonsurvivors of Critically Ill Patients.

Objectives: As interactions of each organ system have been conceptually known to play an important role during life-threatening conditions, we quantitatively evaluated the organ system interactions in critically ill patients and examined the difference in the organ system network structure between the survivors and the nonsurvivors.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Settings: An ICU of a university hospital.

Plasma cell myeloma of the skull base: report of two cases.

Plasma cell myeloma (PCM) of the skull base is rarely encountered in neurosurgical practice. PCM has a wide spectrum of pathology, including a quite benign, solitary plasmacytoma (SPC), and an extremely malignant, multiple myeloma (MM) at the two ends of the spectrum. We have described two patients with PCM of the skull base, of which one harbored SPC, and the other progressed to MM.