BACKGROUND Anesthesia management for patients with severe ankylosing spondylitis scheduled for total hip arthroplasty is challenging due to a potential difficult airway and difficult neuraxial block. We report 4 cases with ankylosing spondylitis successfully managed with a combination of lumbar plexus, sacral plexus and T12 paravertebral block. CASE PRESENTATION Four patients were scheduled f...

A 48-year-old woman was presented to our clinic with some fever and neck pains for about one month. Based on the symptoms and results of image, an empirical diagnosis of tuberculous cervical spondylitis was made. The pain was not significantly decreased after anti-tuberculosis therapy. And, 3 weeks later, she was re-admitted to our hospital for the unbearable pain. An exploration of the C4/5 by...

Twenty four patients with ankylosing spondylitis of 10 or more years' duration were assessed for evidence of cardiac disease. Seven patients (29%) had evidence of cardiac disease, including one patient with a pericardial effusion, three with conduction abnormalities, and two with aortic incompetence. Aortic incompetence in one patient was clinically silent and was detected only with Doppler ech...

Bath medallion reproduced with permission of the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, Bath. The seronegative spondyloarthropathies consist ofa group ofdisorders which includes idiopathic (primary) ankylosing spondylitis, juvenile ankylosing spondylitis, reactive arthritis (or Reiter's syndrome), psoriatic arthritis, and spondylitis of inflammatory bowel disease (enteropathic spondylo...

Oxygen derived free radicals are considered to play an important part in the development of inflammation. A whole blood chemiluminescence assay was used to study N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine induced oxygen radical production in subjects with ankylosing spondylitis or previous yersinia arthritis. In luminol enhanced chemiluminescence, the subjects with previous yersinia arthritis show...

A patient exhibiting typical features of classical rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic spondylitis is described. The patient, a woman, presented at the age of 29 with an inflammatory arthritis. Twenty years later, she developed psoriasis, and after a further 3 years, she was first noted to have rheumatoid nodules and to be strongly seropositive. Now at the age of 60, she has a rigid spine with r...

Brucellosis is a systemic, infectious disease caused by the bacterial genus Brucella and a common zoonosis that still remains a major health problem in certain parts of the world such as the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and Latin America. It may involve multiple organs and tissues. Osteoarticular involvement is the most frequent complication of brucellosis, in which the diagnosis of b...

A 51 year old man with a 20 year history of ankylosing spondylitis and pronounced thoracic gibbus presented with two simultaneous complications of longstanding ankylosing spondylitis, upper lobe fibrobullous disease, and spinal pseudarthrosis. No neurological sequelae developed and treatment was conservative. Both these lesions mimic tuberculosis, and so it is important to determine them accura...