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Biomedical subjects

H Fransen

Publications and source records attributed to H Fransen.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

[Percutaneous vertebroplasty in the treatment of osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures: first short term results].

OBJECTIVE: To describe the technique of percutaneous vertebroplasty and the short-term results in patients with symptomatic, osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures. DESIGN: Prospective follow-up study. METHOD: In a pilot-study to evaluate the short-term safety and effectiveness of percutaneous vertebroplasty, 18 consecutive patients with a total of 33 osteoporotic thoracic or lumbar vertebral compression fractures were treated from October 2001 to June 2002 with a follow-up of 3-6 months. The indication for treatment was a symptomatic, therapy-resistant osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture. Percutaneous vertebroplasty was performed under radiographic control, after previous intraossal venography, using bone cement mixed with barium sulphate. Post-procedural follow-up consisted of radiological evaluation with conventional thoracolumbar X-rays and MRI scans, and interviews of the patients. RESULTS: Percutaneous vertebroplasty was technically successful in 31 of 33 vertebral fractures (94%), and in 16 of 18 patients (89%). One patient with extreme venous contrast leakage could not be treated. Sixteen patients had less or no pain after treatment. One patient retained thoracolumbar back pain after inadequate cementations and refused further treatment. None of the patients reported aggravation of symptoms following the procedure. Contrast leakage was absent in 18 vertebrae. In 8 vertebrae there was contrast leakage to paravertebral veins. In three of these cases the leakage was so severe that embolisation was performed, with success in one case. In 13 vertebrae, cement leakage to intervertebral and paravertebral spaces and pedicular cement spurs were seen, without clinical consequences. Immediately after the procedure and during follow-up there were no clinically relevant complications. CONCLUSION: Percutaneous vertebroplasty was a technically feasible treatment in these patients with symptomatic, therapy-resistant, osteoporotic vertebral fractures. The first short-term results were comparable with results in the literature. A prospective randomised intervention study will be needed to compare percutaneous vertebroplasty with optimal conservative treatment.

Aged↗

Online sentence processing in adults who stutter and adults who do not stutter.

This study had two specific aims. The first aim was to investigate whether, during a silent reading task, persons who stutter encode phonological and semantic information move slowly then persons who do not stutter. The second aim was to investigate how the syntactic context of stimulus sentences influences the speed of coding. Fourteen adult persons who stutter and 14 adult persons who do not stutter participated in a self-paced word-by-word reading experiment. While reading a prose text silently, participants monitored target words that were specified before the presentation of the text. The target words to be monitored for were phonologically similar, categorically related, or identical to a cue word. The influence of syntactic information on the word-monitoring reaction time was studied by presenting the text either as normal prose, in a syntactically correct but semantically anomalous version, or in random word order. The results suggest that the two groups are not different with respect to the speed of word identification but that persons who stutter retrieve semantic information more slowly than persons who do not stutter.

Adolescent↗

[Noninvasive diagnosis of splenic artery aneurysm].

The findings and problems of differential diagnosis of splenic artery aneurysms are illustrated by three patients. By a combination of Doppler sonography and conventional duplex sonography, it was possible to achieve a correct and non-invasive diagnosis.

Aged↗

Hyperparathyroidism-an unusual case.

A case of primary hyperparathyroidism is described that presented unusual features. The patient had been treated previously for squamous cell carcinoma of the lung and therefore it was necessary to exclude ectopic hyperparathyroidism. The results of the tests generally used to distinguish primary from ectopic hyperparathyroidism-the serum chloride level, the serum calcium response to cortisone suppression and the absence of residual or recurrent tumour-suggested that the patient did have the primary form of the disorder. Exploration of the neck revealed no parathyroid tumour or hyperplasia, and the mediastinal parathyroid adenoma was localized only by determination of parathyroid hormone in the venous drainage from the neck and mediastinum.

Adenoma↗