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Kirkland W Davis

Publications and source records attributed to Kirkland W Davis.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Selective nerve root blocks.

Selective nerve root blocks are valuable diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in patients with radicular symptoms. Understanding the anatomy, benefits, and risks, as well as precise needle placement, are important factors in performing successful nerve root blocks. The techniques we describe come from our training and ongoing experience. There are other acceptable methods as well.

Back Pain↗

Epidural steroid injections.

Epidural steroid injections have a significant role in the treatment of patients with low back, neck, and radicular pain. Although these procedures may not address the causative lesions, they often shorten the clinical course of the disease process, keep patients out of the hospital, and provide symptomatic relief that improves quality of life. These procedures are most accurately performed with fluoroscopic guidance and major complications are rare. Although support for cervical epidural steroid injection is less uniform than that for lumbar and caudal injections, a growing body of experience is beginning to support its efficacy and safety.

Adrenal Cortex Hormones↗

MR imaging of the postoperative meniscus of the knee.

Surgery for tears of the menisci of the knee has evolved greatly over the last century and is now an extremely common procedure. Meniscal repair and conservative therapy are the preferred methods of treatment, but most symptomatic torn menisci do not meet the requirements for these options and necessitate partial meniscectomy. After surgery, patients often have recurrent pain and need additional diagnosis. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the postoperative patient is very helpful at diagnosing extrameniscal pathology. It has lower sensitivity for detecting retears after partial meniscectomy, however, as it relies primarily on demonstration of fluid entering the meniscal retear on T2-weighted images. Similarly, conventional MRI is less accurate after meniscal repair, in which the repair site usually maintains altered signal for years. MR arthrography has higher sensitivity for detecting retears in menisci and is the procedure of choice in many situations.

Arthrography↗

Imaging of wrist masses.

The wrist is a complex structure with an extensive differential diagnosis for a presenting mass. However, the vast majority of hand and wrist masses are benign, and many of these have a distinctive radiographic appearance. In this article, the imaging characteristics of the most common entities are reviewed with particular attention to magnetic resonance appearance. The 3 most common hand and wrist lesions include ganglion cysts, giant cell tumors of the tendon sheath, and hemangiomas. Other common lesions that can be diagnosed radiographically include lipomas, neural sheath tumors, infection and inflammation, and variant soft-tissue or bony structures. The appearance of the fibrolipomatous hamartoma will also be demonstrated because this is a radiographically distinctive, though rare, lesion.

Abscess↗