BACKGROUND Cricopharyngeus is the only muscle for which electromyography is used in the differential diagnosis of swallowing disorders. Because of some practical difficulties, electrophysiologic tests for this muscle are not performed routinely. Thus we aimed to describe an alternative topographic way to reach the muscle easily. METHODS On 10 cadavers, a spinal needle (20 G) and on 37 patient...

The sampling of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for chemical analysis is usually performed by a freehand lumbar puncture in routine clinical procedure, while the suboccipital region used postmortem examinations. We introduce new application semiautomated robotic, computed tomography (CT)-guided needle placement and CSF sampling. Postmortem (PMCT) imaging was performed, data were sent to custom-made V...

Spinal anaesthesia developed in the late 1800s with the work of Wynter, Quincke and Corning. However, it was the German surgeon, Karl August Bier in 1898, who probably gave the first spinal anaesthetic. Bier also gained first-hand experience of the disabling headache related to dural puncture. He correctly surmised that the headache was related to excessive loss of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In...

The traditional superoanterior approach for transforaminal epidural steroid injection (TFESI) carries a risk of complication by obstructing arterial flow to the anterior portion of the spinal cord by puncturing the spinal radicular artery that passes through the superoanterior foraminal zone or "safe triangle" zone, which does not describe vascular safety, but rather describes neural safety. Co...

The interest currently being shown in the combined spinal epidural technique prompts us to publish some data we have on the width of the epidural space in obstetric patients. We have been using a recently described modification of this combined technique1 to estimate the width of the posterior epidural space in the midline, in 33 patients for Caesarean section. All patients were in the left lat...