A clinical analysis of idiopathic hypertrophic cranial pachymeningitis with a nodular space-occupying effect / 中华内科杂志

Objective To explore the clinical features,neuroimaging and histopathological findings in patients with idiopathic hypertrophic cranial pachymeningitis (IHCP) with a nodular space occupying effect.Methods Four IHCP cases with a nodular space occupying effect diagnosed in our hospital were retrospectively studied.Results All the 4 patients were men with a mean onset age of 40.25 (33 ～ 50) years old.They all had long disease duration and relapses.The common symptoms of IHCP were chronic headache,multiple cranial nerve palsies and epileptic seizures.CT and MRI of the brain revealed prominent dural partial thickening,which indicated a mass or nodular space occupying effect that mimicked intracranial tumour-like meningioma.The histopathological findings of dura in 2 cases revealed connective tissue proliferation,scattered neutrophile granulocytes and plasmacytes infiltration.Combination therapy of corticosteroid or/and immunosuppressive drugs was effective for the IHCP patients.Conclusions IHCP patients with a nodular space occupying effect usually onset with chronic headache and are often recurrent.The combination therapy of corticosteroid or/and immunosuppressive drugs is effective.The image of the brain presents prominent dural partial thickening,indicating a mass or nodular space occupying effect,which often lead to confusion with intracranial tumours or granulomatosis.

An analysis of clinical features and therapies of patients with psychogenic dizziness / 中华内科杂志

Objective To accumulate clinical experience and to directe clinical work.Methods A total of 208 patients with psychogenic dizziness from department of neurology of Navy General Hospital of PLA were included in the study.Self-rating anxiety scale (SAS),self-rating depression scale (SDS) and Bech-Rafaelsen mania rating scale (BRMS) were used for the evaluation.Results Among all the patients aged from 17 to 77 (the average age:52),152 were female and 56 were male.There were 3 types according to different clinical features and therapy prognosis:anxiety and depression type (176 cases,84.6％),hysteria type(18 cases,8.7％) and mania type(14 cases,6.7％).The drugs increasing the concentration of excitatory had a good therapeutic efficacy on anxiety and depression type.Alluding cure had notable effect on hysteria type and mood stabilizer had notable effect on mania type.Conclusions Women tended to have psychogenic dizziness.It can be divided into three types:anxiety and depression type,hysteria type and mania type.Clinical symptoms and laboratory examination of each type have their own characteristics,and treatment strategies are also different.

Six cases of deep cerebral veins thrombosis / 中华神经科杂志

Objective To analyse the clinical features,imaging characteristics diversity of deep cerebral veins thrombosis (DCVT).Methods From 2004 to 2013,6 patients diagnosed as DCVT were recorded and a retrospective review of the cases were undertaken for the purpose of this analysis.Results Among the 6 patients with DCVT,4 were male and 2 were female,aged from 28 to 69 years old.The disease duration of 4 cases ranged from 2 to 7 days,remnants were 20 days and 3 months respectively.The first symptoms of 4 cases were headache,1 was feeblemindedness,and the other was hemiplegia.The secondary symptoms were disturbance of consciousness,apathy,diplopia and non-infectious fever.Non-contrast computed tomography showed low signal in the bilateral thalamus in four patients,high signal in the transverse sinus and straight sinus in one patient and high signal in torcular in one patient.Abnormal signal was found in bilateral thalamus on magnetic resonance imaging in all patients and some of them had abnormal signal in the mesencephalon or basal ganglia.The patients were definitely diagnosed as DCVT by magnetic resonance venography (MRV) or digital subtraction angiography (DSA).Among them,2 patients were confirmed by brain biopsy.Four patients were followed up with good outcome and 2 were lost to follow-up.Conclusions The clinical manifestations of DCVT are not specific.For acute-onset DCVT patients,the first symptoms are always headache and vomiting,while the main symptoms are declined cognition and slow reaction for chronic-onset ones.Along with the progress,the main symptoms of DCVT are disturbance of consciousness,psychiatric symptoms and intracranial hypertension.Changes in the bilateral thalamus and basal ganglia are especially main characteristics which are easily misdiagnosed as brain tumor according to the images.DCVT can be definitely diagnosed by no signal of deep cerebral veins on MRV or DSA.

Comparison study of imaging features of multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica / 中华放射学杂志

Objective To compare the imaging characteristics of multiple sclerosis (MS) and neuromyelitis optica (NMO) for better diagnosis and differential diagnosis.Methods The brain and spinal MRI images of 60 MS and 48 NMO cases were retrospectively reviewed.The imaging characteristics including the predilection site,morphological features,enhancement manifestations were summarized.All data was analyzed by using t test and Chi square test with SPSS 13.0.Results (1) The three top predilection sites of brain in head MRI of MS patients were periventricular white matter (34 cases in 60),subcortical white matter (27 cases in 60),brain stem (23 cases in 60).MS lesions also were found in basal ganglia,cerebellum,corpus callosum and thalamus,as well as cortex (9 cases in 60).By contrast,brain lesions were observed in 59.4％ (19/32) of NMO patients,and the three top predilection sites of NMO by turns were brain stem (13 cases in 19),periventricular white matter (12 cases in 19),subcortical white matter (7 cases in 19).Furthermore,the lesions surrounding third ventricle (6 cases in 19) and the tegmentum of brain stem near peri-aqueduct (8 cases in 19) in NMO were not found in patients of MS.The involvement of brain stem and thalamus was more frequent in NMO than in MS (x2 =5.267,6.004,P ＜0.05,respectively).(2) The lesions of spinal cord in MS patients were typically oval,peripheral,and asymmetric,but in NMO patients they were longitudinally extensive and centrally located.The mean number of involved vertebral segments in NMO patients was significantly more than that in MS patients (7.3 vs 2.2,t =-9.288,P ＜ 0.01).Furthermore,the number of spinal cord lesions in MS patients was remarkably more than that in NMO (2.0 vs 1.3,t =4.565,P ＜0.01).The ratios of occurrence of spinal cord swelling and distension of NMO patients was 58.3％ (28/48),which was significantly higher than 21.9％ in MS (7/32,x2 =10.370,P ＜0.01).(3)The enhancement pattern in MS was circular (7 cases in 42),oval (6 cases in 42) and irregular (4 cases in 42),while in NMO was mainly sheet-shaped with mild enhancement (5/11).The lesions of spinal cord showed in MS mainly manifested as oval enhancement (16 cases in 26) and linear enhancement (8 cases in 26),while in NMO lesions manifested as strand or mild linear enhancement (26 cases in 35).Conclusions NMO has several distinct imaging characteristics,which are helpful for differentiation from MS.