Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D Lacerte.
Subacute posttraumatic ascending myelopathy is a rare disorder, unrelated to syrinx formation or mechanical instability, that may gradually emerge within the first 1 to 2 weeks after a spinal cord injury. The authors describe three patients with this syndrome and discuss its possible causes as well as its clinical presentation, imaging characteristics, treatment, and patient prognosis.
Accuracy and response time (RT) were measured in the absolute identification (AI) of 10 unidimensional perfectly pairwise discriminable stimuli. One group of 20 subjects performed a visual AI task involving line segments of variable length. A second group of 20 subjects participated in an auditory task with the stimuli composed of pure tones of variable intensity. Subjects performed the task under two conditions: a spatially compatible and a spatially incompatible stimulus-response mapping. Results showed greater accuracy for the visual modality and longer RT for the incompatible mapping. The experimental factors did not substantially alter the bowing observed when performance was plotted according to the ordinal position of the stimuli. The data do not support the hypothesis that the bow effect is attributable to motor programming or motor adjustment stages.
INTRODUCTION: Chondromas are rare intracranial tumors. The authors present two cases of intracranial intradural chondroma, one originating from the falx cerebri and the other from the dura mater of the convexity. METHOD AND RESULTS: Diagnostic procedures, including magnetic resonance imaging, and surgical findings are described. In both cases, pre-operative diagnosis could have been at least suspected, and the tumor was completely removed, without recurrence after a follow-up of many years. The pathogenesis and pathological findings are discussed, and cases from the literature are reviewed. CONCLUSION: Benign intradural chondroma has a good prognosis, with no recurrence after surgical excision in most cases.
A new CT-guided stereotactic system using tridimensional angiography is described. The trajectory is directly determined from a moving probe ('floating line') which appears on a tridimensional stereoscopic angiography, permitting the choice of an avascular trajectory with a high degree of accuracy. The authors have done 84 probe implantations with an excellent diagnostic and therapeutic rate and no morbidity-mortality.