ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Cerebellar dysfunction is common in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). However, neuropsychological studies of this clinical feature are lacking. OBJECTIVE: We investigate the neuropsychological features in relapsing-remitting MS (RR-MS) patients with and without cerebellar dysfunction. METHODS: Twenty-one RR-MS patients with cerebellar dysfunction (RR-MSc), characterized by prevalent ataxic gait and nystagmus, and 21 RR-MS patients without any cerebellar manifestation (RR-MSnc) pair-matched for demographical and clinical variables were studied. All patients from each group underwent an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. Magnetic resonance imaging analysis included hyperintense fast fluid-attenuated inversion-recovery lesion load in the whole brain as well as in the four lobes separately. RESULTS: Any significant differences were detected in total and regional lesion load measurements between the two groups. RR-MSc group performed equally as well as the RR-MSnc group on many of the cognitive exploration measures. Nevertheless, the RR-MSc group performed more poorly than the RR-MSnc group on attention tests (Symbol Digit Modalities Test) and verbal fluency tests (Controlled Oral Word Association Test); neither of the test results proved to be affected by regional lesion loads. CONCLUSION: These results highlight the importance of considering cognitive deficits associated with the presence of cerebellar symptoms in RR-MS.
Subject(s)
Cerebellar Diseases/etiology , Cerebellum/physiopathology , Cognition Disorders/etiology , Cognition , Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting/complications , Adult , Attention , Case-Control Studies , Cerebellar Diseases/physiopathology , Cerebellar Diseases/psychology , Cerebellum/pathology , Cognition Disorders/psychology , Female , Gait Ataxia/etiology , Gait Ataxia/physiopathology , Humans , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Middle Aged , Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting/physiopathology , Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting/psychology , Neuropsychological Tests , Nystagmus, Pathologic/etiology , Nystagmus, Pathologic/physiopathology , Severity of Illness Index , Verbal Behavior , Word Association TestsABSTRACT
The Authors deal the always present problem of a proper reconstruction of the digestive tract after total gastrectomy operations for gastric cancer. The Authors, then, describe a experimental operation, after having dealth with the considerations concerning the symptomatic consequences that usual different kind of operations cause upon patients. That operation has been experimented upon animals, and consists in a neo-stomach. In this reconstruction they interpose a tract of jejunum loop between oesophagus and duodenum. The jejunum loop must be lengthwise dissected, twisted and sutured in such away as to obtain a new structure that will be last anatomically similar to a stomach. The Authors hope that this new technique might be successfully applied upon man sometime in the future.
