Adolescent violence.

Adolescents are the victims, perpetrators, and witnesses of violent acts in the home, at school, and on the streets. Adolescent violence describes a dynamic, destructive, and repercussive process. This article discusses the unique aspects of adolescent violence and the involvement undertaken by the emergency department when adolescent violence results in the need for emergency care.

Cleft palate with autosomal recessive transmission in Brittany spaniels.

In the course of maintaining a large colony of Brittany spaniels for studying a dominantly inherited motor neuron trait, cases of sporadic complete cleft palate were observed. Without intervention, the pups with cleft palate that attempt to nurse, aspirate and die. In this study, we report on the incidence of cleft palate in this dog kindred, describe the gross morphologic characteristics of the cleft, and present a morphometric analysis of the skull of two of the cleft palate pups and one unaffected pup that died at birth. Our data thus far indicate 26.9% incidence of cleft palate in the colony. Pedigree analysis indicates that this cleft palate trait is inherited as an autosomal recessive. High resolution computed tomography scans of the pup heads were used in morphometric comparison of normal and cleft palate pups. We found specific morphologic differences between the cranial base and palate of normal and cleft palate pups. Plans for future studies of the genetics and growth and development of this animal model are discussed. This canine cleft palate trait provides an ideal model for studying a malformation common in humans.

Growth of the cranial base in craniosynostosis.

The configuration of the neurocranium has long been used as a diagnostic tool in assessing infants with abnormal head shape. In the case of craniosynostosis, a characteristic shape is caused by a constraint placed on growth of the neurocranium by prematurely closed sutures and secondary accommodation to that constraint. This investigation is a preliminary test of our hypotheses of growth of the cranial base under these constraints. Three dimensional landmark coordinate data were collected from pre-, peri-, and postoperative CT scans of eleven patients from The Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Deformities Institute, St. Louis, MO. These data were used in two sets of analytical comparisons. Comparisons of preoperative and perioperative morphology were taken to represent preoperative growth, while comparisons of perioperative to postoperative CT scans represent postoperative growth. Finite-element scaling analysis (FESA) and Euclidean distance matrix analysis (EDMA) were used to make these comparisons. Our results show that in cases involving premature closure of the metopic, sagittal, and bilateral coronary sutures, predictions about growth of the cranial base made prior to analysis prove correct. In these forms of craniosynostosis there are characteristic and consistent changes in the cranial base in both pre- and postoperative growth. Preoperative and postoperative growth in patients diagnosed with unicoronal synostosis show a greater degree of individual variability and do not follow a predictable pattern.