BACKGROUND Survival after surgical embolectomy for massive postcesarean pulmonary embolism causing sustained cardiac arrest is rare. CASE One day after an uneventful cesarean delivery, a woman developed cardiac asystole and apnea due to pulmonary embolism. Femoral-femoral cardiopulmonary bypass performed during continuous cardiopulmonary resuscitation allowed a successful embolectomy. Upon aw...

A case is presented of a massive baclofen overdose with the highest blood baclofen concentrations currently reported. Interesting clinical features included profound hypotension, distributive shock and absent brainstem reflexes. Cerebral recovery was surprisingly slow but complete, and was then unexpectedly terminated by a sudden major splenic arterial haemorrhage followed by a severe haemorrha...

Unilateral surgical brain injury of the rat is a model of surgery-related brain damage of humans. Our preliminary experiments showed two phenomena within the damaged cortical region of rat brain. Those were: degeneration and death of neurons and massive gliosis. In the present study we aimed to investigate the mechanisms of neuronal death following brain injury and to characterize responses of ...

Intestinal adaptation following small bowel resection (SBR) is associated with greater rates of enterocyte apoptosis by unknown mechanism(s). Because postresection adaptation is associated with increased translocation of luminal bacteria, we sought to characterize the role for the extrinsic, death receptor pathway for the activation of enterocyte apoptosis after massive SBR. We first performed ...

Massive upper gastrointestinal bleeding is a known complication of advanced sepsis in trauma patients and carries a grave prognosis. However, to our knowledge, an important cause of massive gastrointestinal bleeding, arterio-visceral fistula, has not been discussed in the literature. The most common cause of this unique clinical entity is penetrating high velocity abdominal injuries, altho...

We studied 33 consecutive patients with tuberculous pulmonary cavities complicated by fungus balls to evaluate their treatment. Nineteen had surgical resection for massive or recurrent bleeding or possibility of tumor. One patient died of postpneumonectomy empyema (30-day surgical mortality, 5 percent). Fourteen had no surgery. No patient died of hemoptysis. Respiratory failure contributed most...

Both osteoporotic fractures and pleural effusions are frequently observed in medicine. However, rarely does one associate a hemorrhagic pleural effusion with a thoracic spinal fracture when the patient has not sustained massive trauma. In this paper, we discuss two cases where seemingly insignificant low-energy trauma precipitated massive haemothoraces in elderly patients with underlying osteop...

This is a position paper in which I argue that massive open online programming courses can benefit by the application of automated assessment of programming assignments. I gathered success factors and identified concerns related to automatic assessment through the analysis of experiences other researchers have reported when designing and using automated assessment of programming assignments and...