[Osteochondromas of the spine. A diagnosis to consider in spinal cord compression syndromes].

The authors reviewed 312 cases of solitary and multiple osteochondromas seen in SARAH Hospital for the Locomotor System during a period of 13 years-from 1982 to 1994. They selected six cases of patients with osteochondromas of the spine, corresponding to 1.92% of the total number of diagnosed cases of this entity.

[Spinal cord schwannoma: case report].

The intramedullary localization of schwannomas is rare, corresponding to 0.3% of all intraspinal tumors. The authors report the case of a 52-year-old white female patient that presented with symptoms of spinal compression by the presence of an intramedullary schwannoma at the level C4-C6.

[The ethical dilemmas of human life: the hospital history of children with serious cerebral palsy].

This study deals with the ethical premises of medical treatment for children with serious cerebral palsy. Eight months of ethnographic research were carried out with patients at the Cerebral Palsy Center in the Sarah Hospital in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Observation of treatment for these children, who displayed limited clinical change, led to the following question, as suggested by discussions from medical deontology: What is the purpose of medical treatment for children with serious cerebral palsy? The results of our research point to social and humanist explanations going beyond the official medical scientific explanation, which limits treatment to corporal mechanicism.