There have been reports of abnormalities in the lumbosacral region involving a lower-than-normal termination of the dural sac, which is caused by disease or anatomical variation. Inadvertent dural puncture or other unexpected complications can occur during caudal epidural block or adhesiolysis in patients with these variations, but only a small number of case reports have described this issue. ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the contribution of coronary artery ectasia, either isolated or in association with obstructive coronary artery disease, to morbidity and mortality from ischaemic heart disease. DESIGN A retrospective study of patients undergoing coronary arteriography at a tertiary cardiac centre. PATIENTS AND METHODS The epidemiological, clinical, arteriographic, and follow up characte...

Background: Occult dural injuries are rare and can occur as a result of major or minor head injury. These injuries usually manifest with cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea alone, or with meningitis and cerebral abscess, sometimes many years after the original injury. Case presentation: We present a case of occult dural injury with endocranial complications which occurred in a 34 year old man, wi...

We present a patient with progressive dural calcifications, thickening, and enhancement presumably related to the development of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF). Head CT demonstrated progressive dural calcifications, whereas MR imaging demonstrated progressive dural thickening and enhancement during a 3-year period in which the patient received several gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging studies...

We report a case of a 42-year-old woman with systemic lupus erythematosus and chronic kidney disease stage 5 undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, presenting asthenia, dizziness, abdominal pain and small efforts dyspnea. After a complete physical and clinical examination, including laboratory tests, esophagogastroduodenal endoscopy and gastric lesions biopsy, she was diagnosed w...

Seminiferous tubular ectasia at the level of the mediastinum testis is a recently recognized rare benign condition. It is often bilateral, and usually occurs in elderly men. It is commonly associated with epididymal abnormalities (e.g. spermatocele, epididymal cysts or epididymitis), and it shares a common location (within the mediastinum testis) with cystic dysplasia of the testis and testicul...

This report details a 47 patient, prospective, non-randomized, single-center clinical study to evaluate the safety and performance of a new synthetic dural sealant as an adjunct to standard surgical dural repair techniques to prevent cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage. A consecutive series of patients scheduled for cranial and spinal intradural surgery each received standard dural closures. Afte...

BACKGROUND Various types of lumbar dural punctures may contribute to neurological injury. The etiologies of dural injury include; inadvertent dural punctures due to epidurals placed for labor anesthesia, epidural steroid injections (ESI/transforaminal TESI; approximately 9 million ESI performed in the US per year), deliberate placement of intradural pain devices, and spontaneous cerebrospinal f...

Dural arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is very rare, acquired lesion that may present with intracranial hemorrhage or neurological deficits. The etiology is not completely understood but dural AVF often has been associated with thrombosis of the involved dural sinuses. To our knowledge, this is the first well documented intracranial hemorrhage case caused by dural AVF following microvascular decompr...

Approximately 20% of the adult population suffers from migraine. This debilitating pain disorder is three times more prevalent in women than in men. To begin to evaluate the underlying mechanisms that may contribute to this sex difference, we tested the hypothesis that there is a sex difference in the inflammatory mediator (IM)-induced sensitization of dural afferents. Acutely dissociated retro...