Acute flaccid paraplegia: neurological approach, diagnostic workup, and therapeutic options

AbstractAcute flaccid paraplegia is a clinical occurrence with extreme importance, due to the dramatic presentation, the severity of the underlying disorder, and the generally poor prognosis that follows such a condition. Among etiological factors, the traumatic events are of particular interest, with the clinical treating dealing with a severely ill patient, following fall from height, motor vehicle collisions, and direct shocks applied over the vertebral column. The non-traumatic list is more numerous; however the severity of the acute paraplegia is not necessarily of a lesser degree. Viral infections, autoimmune disorders, and ischemic events involving feeding spinal arteries have been imputed. However, chemical and medications injected during procedures or accidentally intrathecal administration can produce acute flaccid paraplegia. A careful neurological assessment and complete electrophysiological and imaging studies must follow. In spite of the poor prognosis, different therapeutic options have been proposed and applied. Neurosurgical and orthopedic interventions are often necessary when trauma is present, with high dose glucocorticoids treatment preceding the intervention, in a hope to decrease edema-related compression over the spinal cord. Immunoglobulins and plasmapheresis are logical and helpful options when a polyradiculoneuritis produces such a clinical picture. The role of decompression, as neurosurgical exclusivity, has been considered as well

Right Hemispheric Leukoencephalopathy as an Incidental Finding Following a Lightning Strike

BACKGROUND: Lightning injuries may produce a variety of medical conditions, and specific neurological complications have been identified, with the character of immediate aftershock effects or even long-term consequences.AIM: The authors describe the incidental finding following a routine unenhanced brain MRI performed to a young female patient, suffering from a headache.CASE REPORT: Diffuse white matter changes with the character of a leukoencephalopathy were seen, which strictly interested only the right cerebral hemisphere. The parents referred that she suffered from an indoor lightning strike at age of seven months, although she survived with almost no external burns or signs, and recovered uneventfully at that time. A discussion over the effects of electrocution and lightning strike on the human body in general, and over the nervous system, is made. Particular attention must be shown when making the differential diagnosis of leukoencephalopathies with a strictly one-hemisphere extension since several other conditions might resemble each other under the radiological aspect, here including brain viral infections, genetic disorders, and so on.CONCLUSION: The particularity of the long-term aftershock effects of the lightning strike on the central nervous system raise again the necessity of collecting data and duly reporting every electrical accident, lightning events included

Predictive Factors and the Role of Traumatic Brain Injury in Stroke.

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of mortality and invalidity worldwide. Objective: To explore whether traumatic brain injury may be a risk factor for subsequent stroke and to evaluate the role of other risk factors correlated with TBI and stroke. Methods: We analysed 643 patients presented in the emergency department of Trauma UHC, from 1stof June 2011 - 1st of December 2011. We evaluated the following factors: age, gender, and severity of head trauma, type of head trauma, systemic hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and diabetes mellitus. Results: During 1-year of follow upperiod 32 (4.97%) strokes occurred in TBI patients. The evaluation was done in correlation with the other risk factors taken into account in the study. Conclusions: The role of TBI is underestimated in the evaluation of stroke. This study demonstrated that during the first year after TBI, 13.53 % of patients experienced stroke. After careful statistical cor-relations with the selected co-morbidities, we found that the diagnosis of stroke was strongly related with TBI

Burden and attitude to resistant and refractory migraine

Background: New treatments are currently offering new opportunities and challenges in clinical management and research in the migraine field. There is the need of homogenous criteria to identify candidates for treatment escalation as well as of reliable criteria to identify refractoriness to treatment. To overcome those issues, the European Headache Federation (EHF) issued a Consensus document to propose criteria to approach difficult-to-treat migraine patients in a standar