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Biomedical subjects

Lawrence Friedman

Publications and source records attributed to Lawrence Friedman.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Calcific myonecrosis and tenosynovitis: sonographic findings with correlative imaging.

We report the sonographic appearance of a case of calcific myonecrosis and tenosynovitis with correlative plain radiography and CT findings. Calcific myonecrosis is a rare complication of previous trauma that presents as a tumor-like calcified mass years after an initial injury, most commonly affecting the anterior compartment of the lower leg. Although the clinical, radiographic, and MRI features of calcific myonecrosis have been well described, to our knowledge the sonographic appearance has not been reported previously in the literature.

Calcinosis↗

Sonography of the superomedial part of the spring ligament complex of the foot: a study of cadavers and asymptomatic volunteers.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the ability of high-resolution sonography for assessing the thickness and echogenicity of the superomedial part of the normal spring ligament in the foot in cadavers and asymptomatic volunteers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The superomedial part of the normal spring ligament of four cadaveric feet was imaged with a high-resolution linear array transducer. Upon localization, the ligament was injected with 0.1% methylene blue with sonographic guidance. A posteromedial approach was used to dissect the feet immediately following injection to confirm accurate identification of the ligament. The bilateral ligaments in 40 asymptomatic adult volunteers were subsequently imaged. RESULTS: Surgical dissection confirmed the accurate injection of methylene blue into all four cadaveric ligaments. The superomedial part of the normal spring ligament was identified bilaterally in all of the 40 asymptomatic volunteers, with a mean thickness of 3 mm in longitudinal short axes. The ligament was echogenic relative to surrounding fat, and it was thinner in women. Differences in ligament measurements with respect to age, sex, side (left vs. right) and foot dominance were not significant. The volunteers' height, weight and body mass index had a weakly positive correlation with ligament thickness. CONCLUSION: High-resolution ultrasound can be used to identify and measure the thickness of the superomedial part of the normal spring ligament. The provided baseline measurements for the normal ligament could prove valuable when assessing the abnormal ligament.

Adolescent↗

What is psychoanalysis?

Although we are now less inclined to argue about whose treatment is entitled to be called psychoanalysis, we will understand current debates better if we revisualize what originally made psychoanalysis different from other treatments. At its birth, psychoanalysis twisted the common-sense treatments it grew out of into very peculiar shapes. In reaction to that extreme peculiarity, a process of normalizing began almost immediately and continues to this day. This process is illustrated by tracing the rise and fall of peculiarities in four aspects: medical procedure, the analyst's vision, the analyst's role, and the sense of time.

Defense Mechanisms↗

Ultrasonography of the lower extremity.

Ultrasonography is a useful imaging tool for various soft tissue and joint pathologies affecting the lower extremity. This article reviews the normal sonographic appearance of muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, bone, and cartilage. The ultrasound imaging appearance of various pathologic conditions affecting the hip, thigh, knee, lower leg, ankle,and foot are illustrated. The advantages of ultrasonography are highlighted.

Bursitis↗

Sonography of intramuscular myxomas: the bright rim and bright cap signs.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to retrospectively review sonographic images of pathologically proven soft tissue myxomas to determine whether a sonographic correlate to the bright rim and bright cap signs described in the magnetic resonance imaging literature is present. METHODS: The study group consisted of 6 patients with pathologically proven soft tissue myxomas (1 man and 5 women; age range, 41-72 years; mean, 56.5 years). The available sonographic images for each subject were retrospectively reviewed by 2 authors (L.F. and K.F.), with agreement reached by consensus. Among other findings, images were also reviewed for a peripheral rim of increased echogenicity (termed the "bright rim sign") and for the presence of a triangular hyperechoic area adjacent to at least one of the poles of the mass (termed the "bright cap sign"). RESULTS: The bright rim and bright cap signs were seen in 5 (83%) of the 6 myxomas. The single case without the bright cap sign was not the same case as the one lacking the bright rim sign. CONCLUSIONS: The sonographic bright rim and bright cap signs were associated with 5 (83%) of the 6 intramuscular myxomas. These findings correlate with their magnetic resonance imaging equivalents, which are well documented in the literature, due to muscle atrophy and adjacent fatty infiltration. Recognition of these features may assist in a more accurate sonographic diagnosis before biopsy.

Adult↗

Flirting with virtual reality.

Psychoanalysis encourages patients to experience a virtual reality of the psychoanalytic relationship, in which both image and wish can be experimented with. Originally, the patient's awareness was supposed to move back and forth between the virtual and the actual, in a flickering and uncertain fashion. That is uncomfortable, and analysts have often preferred the domain of virtuality or of actuality, or have denied the distinction altogether. Recent philosophical developments and doubts about transference neurosis and reconstruction further tempt analysts to relax the flickering uncertainty of virtual and actual. Patient and analyst may gain comfort but lose something in the process.

Freudian Theory↗

Is there a special psychoanalytic love?

Although the analyst's role mandates a degree of detachment, analysts have often said that they offer patients a special kind of love. They have tended to equate that love with understanding, thus neutralizing the paradox but also diluting the love. When something more resembling a loving affect is sought, the suggestions include the love a scholar feels for his subject, the love that accompanies immersion in great literature, and love that is self-generated by deliberate efforts to move toward the patient or to generate empathy in oneself. But a form of love may also arise from the analyst's unique and relatively pure acquaintance with a person's "appeal," by which is meant the patient's effort to elicit responses from the analyst. Although the awareness of transference most obviously tends to immunize him, it also gives him a poignant "insider's" feel of the patient's appeal, since he is the target of that appeal while being unencumbered by the myriad considerations that would color his perception were he to regard himself as a proper object.

Humans↗

Sonography of full-thickness supraspinatus tears: comparison of patient positioning technique with surgical correlation.

OBJECTIVE: Sonography has become a popular technique for the assessment of musculoskeletal disorders. Patient positioning is crucial to a thorough and accurate assessment of rotator cuff tendons. Two positions, the Crass and modified Crass, have been routinely used in the research and clinical settings to examine the supraspinatus tendon. Our study was a prospective trial to determine whether the Crass or the modified Crass position affords the most accurate measure of supraspinatus tears when compared with surgical findings. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Twenty-one patients with full-thickness supraspinatus tears underwent shoulder sonography in both the Crass and the modified Crass positions. Measurements of supraspinatus tears were performed in the sagittal and transverse dimensions. Patients subsequently underwent either arthroscopic or open supraspinatus repair. Intraoperative measurements were made in two dimensions and were compared with sonographic findings. RESULTS: Sonography had 100% specificity in detecting full-thickness supraspinatus tears. No statistically significant difference was seen between the size of supraspinatus tears in the Crass and modified Crass positions and surgical findings in the transverse plane (p = 0.55 and 0.61, respectively). In the sagittal dimension, no statistically significant difference was seen between surgical findings and the Crass position (p = 0.14); however, a difference existed when the modified Crass position was used (p = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Sonography reliably detects and quantifies supraspinatus tears. Both the Crass and the modified Crass positions reflected the true size of supraspinatus tears in the transverse plane. In the sagittal plane, the Crass position is the more useful to quantify supraspinatus tears because the modified Crass position overestimates the size of such tears.

Adult↗

Virologic and immunologic outcomes after 24 weeks in HIV type 1-infected adolescents receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy.

BACKGROUND: Adolescents represent the fastest growing demographic group of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in the United States. At present, there is little information available about their response to therapy. METHODS: We studied 120 adolescents infected via high-risk behaviors who began receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), to determine their virologic and immunologic response to therapy. RESULTS: Subjects were enrolled at 28 sites of the Pediatric Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Clinical Trials Group. After 16-24 weeks of HAART, 59% of subjects had reproducible undetectable virus loads, according to repeat measurements (virologic success). As enumerated by flow-cytometric analysis, increases in levels of CD4 helper cells (both naive and memory) and decreases in levels of CD8 suppressor cells were observed. Partial restoration of some immunologic parameters for patients who did not achieve virologic success was also observed, but to a more limited extent than for adolescents with virologic success. Adherence to HAART was the only predictor of achieving undetectable virus loads. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents have the capacity to improve their immunologic status with HAART. Lower than expected success in virologic control is related to lack of adherence, and efforts to improve treatment outcome must stress measures to assure adherence to medication.

Adolescent↗

Sonography of injury of the ulnar collateral ligament of the elbow-initial experience.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to describe the sonographic appearance of injuries of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) of the elbow. DESIGN AND PATIENTS: Eight non-professional male baseball pitchers, ages 13-35 years, with medial elbow pain and clinical suspicion of ulnar collateral ligament injury, were referred for imaging. All eight underwent sonography of the affected and contralateral asymptomatic elbow, and six also underwent MR imaging. Neither valgus stress nor power Doppler was used during the sonographic examinations. Time from onset of symptoms to imaging was 1.5 weeks to 6 months. Three patients had surgical confirmation of their injuries, with time from imaging to surgery of 2 days to 9 months. RESULTS: In four patients, the UCL was ruptured, manifest sonographically in three cases as discontinuity of the normally hyperechoic ligament with anechoic fluid in the gap and in one case as non-visualization of the ligament with heterogeneous echogenicity in the expected location of the ligament. Two adolescent patients had avulsions of the UCL from the medial epicondyle, with sonographic demonstration of the avulsed echogenic bony fragment in both cases. One patient had a mild sprain, manifest as mild thickening and decreased echogenicity of the ligament sonographically compared with the contralateral normal elbow, with mild surrounding hypoechoic edema. The eighth patient had a small partial tear of the deep surface of the distal aspect of the ligament, visualized as a hypoechoic focus between the deep surface of the ligament and its ulnar attachment. CONCLUSION: Tears of the ulnar collateral ligament are manifested sonographically as non-visualization of the ligament or alteration of the normal morphology.

Adolescent↗

Limited access data sets from studies funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

The NHLBI has recently developed standards for protection of subject confidentiality which enable distribution of large data sets collected in completed epidemiological studies and clinical trials. This allows other investigators to pursue research using the data these studies have generated. An ethical commitment to protect the privacy of the research subjects requires careful review and some compromise in data details prior to distribution. To meet the challenge posed by the ethical and legal requirements to protect participants' privacy and making data sets useful for researchers, the NHLBI has devised a policy which seeks to balance these two opposing forces. This paper describes this policy as well as the limited access data sets currently available from NHLBI.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗

Do arrhythmia patients improve survival by participating in randomized clinical trials? Observations from the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST)and the Antiarrhythmics Versus Implantable Defibrillators Trial (AVID).

It is debatable whether patients benefit directly from participation in a randomized clinical trial. We attempt to address this question for participants in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST) and the Antiarrhythmics Versus Implantable Defibrillators (AVID) studies. Survival rates were compared between eligible patients who enrolled in the trials and eligible patients who did not enroll, adjusting for baseline covariates. In CAST, despite that the active therapy was found to confer an almost threefold increased risk of death, survival was similar between the 3163 enrolled and the 1363 nonenrolled eligible patients. However, when patients were under study management, their risk of death was approximately 20% lower than when they left study management. In AVID, overall survival was similar between the 1016 enrolled and the 1246 nonenrolled eligible patients. However, mortality was substantially higher among patients not enrolled because the referring physician mandated the type of therapy. Overall these observational analyses suggest a net improvement in survival for the participants in these two trials.

Arrhythmias, Cardiac↗

Predictors of adherence to treatment for latent tuberculosis infection in high-risk Latino adolescents: a behavioral epidemiological analysis.

The objective was to test whether theoretical variables predict adherence to treatment for latent tuberculosis infection in high-risk Latino adolescents. 286 Latino adolescents, age 13-18 years, were recruited from 10 middle/high schools in San Diego County, San Diego, USA. Participants completed a baseline interview and up to 9 monthly interviews. The cumulative number of pills consumed in 9 months was regressed on 16 independent variables, entered hierarchically in seven blocks. The final model accounted for 25% of the variance in adherence to isoniazid (INH), F (16, 230)=4.69, p<0.001. Adherence counseling (+), age (-), grades (+), being bicultural (+), and risk behaviors (-) were significantly related to adherence. Learning theories presume that adherence to medical regimens requires social support and freedom from physical and social barriers. Results support these theories. Future studies should explore additional precepts in order to identify additional predictors and to maximize adherence to INH among Latino adolescents and other high-risk populations. Doing so should decrease the risk of active TB among high-risk racial/ethnic and foreign-born populations.

Acculturation↗

Increasing Latino adolescents' adherence to treatment for latent tuberculosis infection: a controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to determine the efficacy of coaching Latino adolescents with latent tuberculosis infection to adhere to isoniazid treatment. METHODS: Participants (n = 286) were randomly assigned to adherence coaching, attention control, or usual care groups. Adherence was measured via interviews and validated with urine assays. RESULTS: Coaching resulted in significant increases in adherence compared with attention and usual care groups. Bicultural adolescents were more likely to be adherent than those most or least acculturated. Age and risk behavior were negatively related to adherence. CONCLUSIONS: Coaching can increase Latino adolescents' adherence to treatment for latent tuberculosis infection and should contribute to tuberculosis control for adolescents at high risk of contracting the disease.

Adolescent↗