Shunt malfunction is a life-threatening cause of altered mental status and ventriculomegaly in patients with shunted hydrocephalus. While shunt should be highest on the differential for such patients, there may additional toxic/metabolic derangements that are contributing to their presentation not overlooked. Here we present case 41-year-old woman dependent hydrocephalus presenting intracranial...

BACKGROUND We previously reported a reduction in central venous catheter (CVC) malfunction when using once-weekly recombinant tissue-plasminogen activator (rt-PA) as a locking solution, compared with thrice-weekly heparin. OBJECTIVES To identify risk factors for CVC malfunction to inform a targeted strategy for rt-PA use. DESIGN Retrospective analysis. SETTING Canadian hemodialysis (HD) u...

Most versions of the Peterson-Gorenstein-Zierler (PGZ) decoding algorithm are not true bounded distance decoding algorithms in the sense that when a received vector is not in the decoding sphere of any codeword, the algorithm does not always declare a decoding failure. For a t-error-correcting BCH code, if the received vector is at distance i, i t, from a codeword in a supercode with BCH distan...

INTRODUCTION The diagnosis of shunt malfunction can be difficult even for the experienced clinician and may lead to disastrous circumstances when misinterpreted. Less experienced physicians may rely more on radiographic reports as a primary diagnostic modality. In this study, we evaluated the reliability of using these reports without accurate clinical assessment. METHODS All shunt revisions ...