Medialisation laryngoplasty: a new surgical frontier in the management of vocal cord paralysis.

Patients who are victims of vocal cord paralysis usually suffer from husky or hoarse voice which is very much jeopardising their future particularly in professional voice users like singers, priests, teachers, etc. Phonosurgical techniques like medialisation laryngoplasty has opened a new horizon in the management of dysphonia with unilateral vocal cord paralysis. Medialisation laryngoplasty is sometimes described under the heading of laryngoplastic phonosurgery or thyroplasty. A report of 10 cases of unilateral vocal cord paralysis with dysphonia subjected to medialisation laryngoplasty from March 1996 to March 1998 with 90% success is presented. Only one patient developed inspiratory stridor as a complication.

Effect of "rasayanas", a herbal drug preparation on immune responses and its significance in cancer treatment.

Rasayanas are considered to be immunostimulating preparations used extensively in indigenous medical practice. However there are only very few reports to substantiate this claim, and this paper gives preliminary evidence for the potentiation of immunity by Rasayanas given to mice orally. Administration of Rasayanas were found to enhance the proliferation of spleen cells significantly especially in the presence of mitogen. Similar result was also seen with bone marrow cells; however mitogenic stimulation could not be observed. Esterase activity was found to be enhanced in bone marrow cells indicating increased maturation of cells of lymphoid linkage. Rasayanas also enhanced humoral immune response as seen from the increased number of antibody forming cells and circulating antibody titre. These results indicate the usefulness of Rasayana as immunostimulating agent.

Effect of "rasayanas" a herbal drug preparation on cell-mediated immune responses in tumour bearing mice.

Administration of herbal preparation, Rasayanas has been found to enhance the natural killer cell activity in normal as well asin tumour bearing animals. Brahma Rasayana (BR) was found to have the maximum activity. BRand Aswagandha Rasayana (AR) were found to activate antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity significantly. AR was also found to activate macrophages. All the Rasayanas were found to stimulate antibody dependent complement mediated tumour cell lysis. The results of these studies indicate usefullness of Rasayanas for immunostimulation in normal and in disease state.