A 3-year-old boy with neck pain after motor-vehicle accident. Pseudospread of the atlas.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S J Hessel.
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The experience with laser-assisted angioplasty at a community hospital was reviewed. One hundred twenty patients required angioplasty during a 7-month period, and in only 17-13 of whom had superficial femoral artery occlusions--was the use of lasers deemed appropriate. The success rate was 65% for laser-assisted angioplasty and 98% for balloon angioplasty. Laser-assisted angioplasty was the initial intervention in eight of the 13 superficial femoral artery occlusions. In two cases, a wire had been first advanced across the lesion, and in three cases, attempts to cross the lesion with a wire had been unsuccessful. The availability of the laser did not significantly increase the number of cases amenable to angioplasty, and at present laser angioplasty, does not seem to be cost-effective for community hospitals.
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Following pharmacologic vasodilatation, multiple vascular "lakes" were observed on angiograms of the hand in 55 patients. Most had no history of vascular anomalies or disease. The authors believe that these lakes are venous structures and that their filling is a physiologic phenomenon.
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Although digital angiography may involve the same physician processes in the university as in the community hospital, it can be seen that the indications, approaches, and utility of DSA are somewhat different in the two environments. DSA is presently in a state of change, in part because of the maturing of other modalities and also because of the present emphasis on cost-saving in medical imaging. As referring physicians become used to digital arteriographic images, more and more procedures will be performed with DSA. We believe the DSA will have an important role in the community hospital for years to come. Its emergence as the first of the "conventional" imaging techniques to be digitized can be seen as an initial step toward the total digital imaging department of the future.
This study evaluated how accurately the chest film could be used to determine pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCW) in patients with chronic heart disease. Six experienced readers interpreted the erect posteroanterior chest radiographs of 50 patients whose measured PCWs ranged from 6 to 38 mm Hg. Direct numeric estimates of PCW from the films were closely related to measured levels of PCW (r = 0.675). This linear correlation increased to 0.81 when individual-reader variations were reduced by taking a "consensus" (mean) of the six readers' estimates for each case. A combination of the judged degree of pulmonary blood flow redistribution (PFR) and three particular signs of pulmonary venous hypertension (PVH), basal and perihilar vascular blurring and alveolar edema, adequately summarized the radiographic information about PCW. These combined judgments of PFR/PVH identified films from patients with higher and lower PCW levels as accurately as readers' numeric estimates of PCW. Other radiographic signs (enlargement of the heart and central pulmonary vessels and the presence of Kerley lines or pleural effusion) were also positively related to increases in PCW, but added little to the information provided by the PFR/PVH criteria.
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At the community medical center, we have introduced and successfully applied digital subtraction angiography (DSA) to disease processes seen in 1,144 patients. Although there is a trade-off between increased contrast resolution and decreased spatial resolution with the DSA approach, nonetheless in many vascular beds it provides rapid, safe, and accurate disease diagnosis.
Findings from computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) examinations of 74 patients who were clinically thought to have pelvic masses and of 110 patients who had possible recurrence of pelvic tumors were analyzed. There was no significant difference in the ability of the two modalities to identify masses or to predict disease extent. Although both CT and US failed to detect some examples of spread outside of the pelvis, overstaging (apart from two cases of unconfirmed parametrial spread) did not occur with CT and occurred only once with US. The sensitivity was 0.96 for CT and 0.91 for US in the detection of pelvic masses. Both modalities had an accuracy of 0.81 in the detection of recurrent disease.
A prospective evaluation of computed tomography (CT), ultrasonography (US), and Tc-99m sulfur colloid scintigraphy of the liver was performed in 189 patients who had either colon (n = 129) or breast (n = 60) carcinoma. Imaging was performed with fourth-generation CT scanners, gray-scale or phased array ultrasound scanners, and 37-tube gamma cameras. Studies were evaluated independently and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed. In addition, a standard 2 X 2 matrix analysis was performed. In patients who had all three examinations (n = 122), the matrix analysis showed that CT had a slightly higher sensitivity (0.93) than scintigraphy (0.86) or US (0.82); specificities were 0.88, 0.83, and 0.85, respectively. These differences were not statistically significant. However, ROC curves showed that CT had the highest true-positive ratio at every false-positive ratio, and that US had the lowest. The performance of CT did not differ significantly from that of scintigraphy, but was better than that of US (p less than .05), especially in patients with breast carcinoma. Overall, CT provided the most accurate means for detecting liver metastases from both primary lesions.
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Prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) is a rapid, potent vasodilator which, when infused into the arterial system in low doses by bolus injection, has no significant systemic effects and has a relatively long duration of action. Sixty-three hand angiograms were done on 55 patients, comparing PGE1 to tolazoline and to angiograms done with no vasodilation. There was no significant difference between PGE1 and tolazoline in digital artery opacification; however, venous opacification was very significantly better with PGE1. PGE1 should be a drug of choice in hand angiography.
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A prospective study of the accuracy of computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound was undertaken in 112 consecutive patients with suspected adrenal disease. CT had a sensitivity of 84% (47/56), a specificity of 98% (55/56), and an accuracy of 90%. Ultrasound had a sensitivity of 79% (22/28), a specificity of 61% (14/23), and an overall accuracy of 70%. When patients with Cushing disease and adrenal hyperplasia were excluded, and only masses such as pheochromocytoma, adenoma, and carcinoma were considered, the sensitivity of both CT and ultrasound was increased. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves differed for CT and ultrasound, and strongly supported the diagnostic superiority of CT.
A prospective cooperative study was performed to assess the relative efficacy of computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound in detecting and identifying pancreatic lesions. Of the 279 patients in the study, 146 were found to have a normal pancreas, and 133 had an abnormal pancreas. All patients underwent both CT and ultrasound examinations. Forty-four ultrasound examinations were technically unsatisfactory. When these suboptimal examinations were excluded, CT had a sensitivity of 0.87 and a specificity of 0.90 in detecting an abnormal pancreas. Ultrasound had a sensitivity of 0.69 and a specificity of 0.82. In detecting a lesion and identifying it as malignant or inflammatory, CT had a sensitivity of 0.84 and ultrasound had a sensitivity of 0.56. It is concluded that CT is the method of choice for detecting a pancreatic lesion, assessing its extent, and defining its etiology.