A 57-year-old man presented with increasing respiratory distress. Chest radiography (Figure 1) and computed tomography (Figure 2) confirmed the diagnosis of a huge lung bulla. Bullectomy was performed (Figure 3). Subsequently, the remaining lung expanded fully to fill the hemithorax. On follow-up after 7 years, the patient was asymptomatic with fully expanded lung without any bulla. Asian Cardi...

A 79 year-old man sought treatment in the emergency room complaining of persistent fever, chest pain, and general fatigue. A chest X-ray showed a giant infectious bulla (24 cm in diameter) in the left lung. The patient had no history of abnormalities on X-rays, and his latest medical check-up, conducted in the preceding year, had produced no abnormal findings. Diagnostic procedures, including b...

In most mammals, auditory ossicles in the middle ear, including the malleus, incus and stapes, are the smallest bones. In mice, a bony structure called the auditory bulla houses the ossicles, whereas the auditory capsule encloses the inner ear, namely the cochlea and semicircular canals. Murine ossicles are essential for hearing and thus of great interest to researchers in the field of otolaryn...

BACKGROUND As the idea of stem cell technology in the treatment of sensorial hearing loss has emerged over the past decades, the need for in vivo models for related experiments has become explicit. One of the most common experimental models for inner ear stem cell delivery experiments is the Wistar albino rat. AIMS To investigate the surgical anatomy of the temporal bone of the Wistar albino ...

Secretory otitis media (SOM) is one of the causes of permanent hearing loss. The key factor in the pathogenesis of the SOM is a chronic under-atmospheric middle ear (ME) pressure, which is assigned mainly to an altered ME gas exchange in combination to an impaired Eustachian tube (ET) function. Recent research pointed to the importance of the mastoid in the ME pressure balance related to ambien...

A 65-year-old man was admitted to our hospital for treatment of a squamous cell carcinoma in his right lung. Respiratory function testing showed an extremely reduced forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) of 1.0 l (29.9% of predicted), and a reduced FEV1/FVC ratio of 24.1%. Arterial blood gases on room air showed a pH of 7.41, a PaCO(2) of 36.7 mmHg, and a PaO(2) of 79.3 mmHg. To assess th...

Ms L is a 47-year-old lady who was referred with severe, left-sided pleuritic chest pain and painful left arm weakness that occurred predictably during consecutive commercial flights. Subsequent investigations diagnosed a large left-sided, isolated bulla. A VATS bullectomy was performed with no complications, and a symptomless flight followed. We discuss here the physiological explanation for h...