Introduction. Schwannomas of the head and neck develop from the sheaths of cranial, peripheral or autonomic nerves. Between 25% and 45% of schwannomas occur in this region. Schwannomas of the sympathetic chain are very rare, and the literature describes just over 40 cases, localised mostly in the neck or retroperitoneal areas. Case report. We present the case of a 38 year-old woman with a large...

OBJECTIVES Thoracoscopic surgery using internal intercostal nerve block, vagal block and targeted sedation without endotracheal intubation is a promising technique for selected patients, but little is known about its feasibility and safety. METHODS We evaluated 109 patients with lung (105), mediastinal (3) or pleural (1) tumours treated using non-intubated thoracoscopic surgery. Internal, int...

Mediastinum is a site for neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions and many of them present as mediastinal mass. The location and composition of these lesions are critical in arriving at a clinical diagnosis. This study of different mediastinal masses is aimed to find out frequency of malignancy, their compartmental distribution and characteristics through computed tomography. Materials & Methods:...

OBJECTIVE The European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) has proposed preoperative lymph-node staging guidelines (LNSGs) for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) based on the introduction of new staging modalities into clinical practice. The validity of these guidelines was assessed. METHODS Among the patients (n=185) with histologically confirmed NSCLC diagnosed between 2007 and 2009, who we...

DESCRIPTION A 24-year-old man presented with dyspnoea on exertion. Chest x-ray showed an enlargement of the upper anterior mediastinum (figure 1A). Chest CT showed a huge mass with the size of 7.6×4.8 cm in the upper anterior mediastinum (figure 1B). This mass compressed the main pulmonary artery trunk (MPA) and the left pulmonary artery. Transthoracic two-dimensional echocardiography also reve...

OBJECTIVES Although video-assisted mediastinoscopic lymphadenectomy (VAMLA) has greatly increased the accuracy of mediastinal staging, its clinical value as a therapeutic tool for complete mediastinal lymph node dissection in the treatment of left-sided lung cancer is not well elucidated. METHODS We identified the consecutive 649 patients with left-sided lung cancer undergoing minimally invas...

A 48 year old woman is described who presented with increasing muscular rigidity and who was found to have a mediastinal tumour. Electrophysiological studies revealed that the muscular stiffness resulted from very high frequency motor unit activity which outlasted voluntary effort, and which was abolished by nerve block. The abnormal activity may have arisen at the anterior horn cell level. Mar...

A teratoma, by definition, is a true tumour or neoplasm composed of multiple tissues of kinds foreign to the part in which it arises. In a series of 82 cases Willis (1953) quotes the following sites of origin: ovary, 50, and testes 19, the remainder being epididymal, retroperitoneal, pre-sacral, anterior mediastinal, intrapericardial and cerebral. A careful search of the literature failed to re...