ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Ocular motor nerve palsies (OMNP) frequently cause patients to present in an emergency room. In the following study, we report the differential diagnosis of OMNP by use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and CSF examination as a standard. METHOD: We performed a data analysis of N = 502 patients who presented with oculomotor, trochlear, and/or abducens nerve palsy in the emergency room of the Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, between January 2006 and December 2019. We report clinical and MRI scan findings in all patients; furthermore, the CSF of 398 patients has been analysed. RESULTS: Abducens nerve palsies were most common (45%), followed by palsies of the oculomotor (31%) (CNP III) and trochlear nerve (15%). Multiple OMNPs were seen in 9% of our cohort. The most common causes included inflammations (32.7%), space-occupying lesions, such as aneurysms or neoplasms (17.3%), diabetes mellitus (13.3%), and brainstem infarctions (11%). Still 23.4% of the patients could not be assigned to any specific cause after differential diagnostic procedures and were described as idiopathic. One of three patients with an inflammation and 39% of the patients with space-occupying lesions showed additional cranial nerve deficits. CONCLUSION: Inflammation and space-occupying processes were the most frequent causes of OMNP, although brainstem infarctions also play a significant role, in particular in CNP III. The presence of additional CNPs increases the probability of an inflammatory or space-occupying cause.
Subject(s)
Abducens Nerve Diseases , Cranial Nerve Diseases , Oculomotor Nerve Diseases , Trochlear Nerve Diseases , Abducens Nerve Diseases/complications , Abducens Nerve Diseases/etiology , Cranial Nerve Diseases/complications , Cranial Nerve Diseases/diagnosis , Diagnosis, Differential , Humans , Oculomotor Nerve Diseases/diagnosis , Oculomotor Nerve Diseases/etiology , Paralysis/etiology , Trochlear Nerve , Trochlear Nerve Diseases/complications , Trochlear Nerve Diseases/diagnosisABSTRACT
Arthritis of the tarsometatarsal joints is a challenging problem to treat. It can cause chronic foot pain and functional disability. We present a surgical technique for tarsometatarsal joint arthrodesis using a trephine to resect the articular surfaces and a dowel plug of an autogenous calcaneal graft with locking plate fixation. The procedure has been shown to result in osseous fusion, and it is technically relatively simple to complete.
