Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D Vangrover.
Foreign body ingestion is a common problem encountered in the emergency room. A swallowed toothbrush poses a special problem as it never passes through the GI tract spontaneously. Early endoscopy and removal is recommended. We report a 16-year-old girl who accidentally swallowed a toothbrush which was extracted via endoscopy without complications.
Two young adults with characteristic features of histiocytic medullary reticulosis (HMR) are described. Of particular interest was the development of striking clinical and laboratory features of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), in the absence of sepsis in both cases. Both patients had a marked and fatal bleeding tendency. The association between neoplasia and DIC is well established, but, to the best of our knowledge, DIC presenting a major feature of HMR has not yet been described. The possible pathogenesis of DIC in HMR is discussed.