Mark T Marunick | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

Velopharyngeal dysfunction: speech characteristics, variable etiologies, evaluation techniques, and differential treatments.

This tutorial addresses the complex pathophysiology; various structural and neurologic causes; methods of clinical appraisal; and alternative behavioral prosthetic, and medicosurgical treatments of velopharyngeal dysfunction. To balance the primary focus of this review on hypernasal resonance and articulation disorders, discussions concerning hyponasal speech characteristics and underlying etiologies are also rendered.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Malignant ameloblastoma, spindle cell variant.

In this report, we document the histologic and clinical features of a previously undefined spindle cell variant of ameloblastoma that eventually behaved in a malignant fashion during a protracted course. The predominant histologic pattern was a well-differentiated, cellular, spindled epithelial proliferation arising in the maxilla of a 14-year-old African American girl. Over 19 years, the patient experienced numerous local recurrences, metastases to distant bones after 15 years, and finally bulky local recurrence with intracranial extension resulting in death. This ameloblastic malignancy histologically simulates a low-grade true sarcoma or an ameloblastic sarcoma, but differs in that the extensive spindle cell proliferation is epithelial, characterized by strong cytokeratin immunoreactivity and negative vimentin staining.

Adolescent↗