Host immune sensitivity to metal substances may be a major cause of titanium cranioplasty failure. This hypothesis that allergy screening may be an accurate way to identify this immune sensitivity and to guide implant material selection has not been investigated. The authors prospectively investigated the prevalence of metal hypersensitivity in patients for whom cranioplasty was planned and assessed its relationship with titanium implant failure. They suggest that routine allergy screening be performed before titanium plate cranioplasty.
This article demonstrated that amyloid beta (Aβ) accumulation and neuroinflammation have a role in cognitive impairment in a rat intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) model, as well as a co-location relationship of iron and Aβ. The findings in this article throw light on the correlation of Alzheimer disease–like pathological changes and cognitive impairment after IVH, and may help to find therapeutic agents for alleviating cognitive symptoms in patients with IVH patients in the future.
The authors evaluated the rate of long-term and delayed recovery of function in patients with brain injury caused by severe stroke and trauma requiring tracheostomy and tube feeding at the time of discharge from intensive care.
The study provides guidance to physicians who counsel families of brain injury survivors on the likelihood of long-term recovery and also informs time-points of outcome assessment in clinical trials of brain injury.
This study sought to address a knowledge gap about the biological significance of dual growth hormone (GH)/prolactin-staining in mammosomatotroph pituitary adenomas. The finding that acromegalics with tumors that stain for prolactin and GH, which represented almost a quarter of acromegalics in this study, had more aggressive clinical presentations and postoperative outcomes than acromegalics with tumors staining for GH alone suggests that prolactin staining provides useful prognostic information for acromegalics undergoing pituitary surgery.
In this study, the authors sought to identify the relationship between breathing movements and elbow flexion in patients with a traumatic brachial plexus injury who undergo phrenic nerve transfer to restore biceps flexion, and if this relation changes over time. This study is very important as it demonstrates for the first time that the impact of breathing wanes over time, and that this waning impacted elbow range of motion more than biceps strength and EMG recordings.
The usefulness of intraoperative MRI, which shows a lower incidence of artifacts compared with early postoperative MRI, was demonstrated in terms of evaluation of the extent of tumor resection in glioma surgery. This finding is important because accurate evaluation of the extent of tumor resection is crucial for decision-making regarding postoperative chemoradiotherapy and estimating a patient’s prognosis.
Using next-generation sequence analyses validating with sanger sequence in 31 cases of adamantinomatous-type craniopharyngiomas. The authors could classify these into two groups: one with theCTNNB1gene, that is coding beta-catenin and has a mutation, and another without the mutation. The recurrence-free survival was significantly shorter in those with theCTNNB1mutation than it was in those without the mutation, suggesting the importance of genes related to the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway as a target molecule of refractory adamantinomatous-type craniopharyngiomas.
Controversy persists as to which procedure—3-stage or 2-stage Gamma Knife surgery (GKS)—achieves better results for large (> 10 cm3in volume) brain metastases. This multi-institutional retrospective study (JLGK1601) showed no differences in either overall survival or secondary endpoints between these two treatments. Three-stage and 2-stage GKS performed according to their protocols were both good treatment options in selected patients with large brain metastases meeting the JLGK1601 study inclusion criteria.
The authors performed a retrospective review of their institution’s interfacility transfers to the neurosurgery service, with a goal of comparing inpatient versus emergency department transfers and identifying patients who could be triaged locally to improve the safety and efficiency of interfacility transfers.
The authors explore the personal histories of America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard, and pioneering skull base surgeon and neurotologist Dr. William F. House. Their career trajectories fatefully intersected, with profound implications for the history of the US space program.