Outcome of Patients with Surgical Site Infection after Craniotomy.

Background: The management of surgical site infection (SSI) after craniotomy remains challenging with few existing recommendations. Patients and Methods: We reviewed the medical files of patients who underwent surgery between 2009 and 2018 to manage infection after craniotomy at our tertiary hospital. The Cox proportional hazards model and the Renyi test were used to investigate the association between relapse or all-cause mortality and selected variables. We compared infections with and without intra-cranial involvement using the Fisher test and the Wilcoxon rank sum test. Results: Seventy-seven episodes of infection were identified in 58 patients. The proportion of relapse was estimated to be 32.2% (± standard deviation [SD] 6.9) at five years. Intra-cranial infection was present in 15.6% of the cases (n = 12). Bone flap was removed in the majority of cases (93.5%) and the overall median duration of antibiotic therapy was six weeks (interquartile range [IQR] 6-12 weeks). Staphylococcus aureus was associated with a higher risk of relapse (p = 0.037). The administration of parenteral antibiotic agents (p = 0.012) and bone flap removal (p = 0.0051) were correlated with less relapse. In contrast, immunosuppressive drug use and radiotherapy were correlated with a higher risk of relapse (p = 0.014 and p = 0.031, respectively) and a higher all-cause mortality (p = 0.0093 and p < 0.0001, respectively). We found no difference between infections with and without intra-cranial involvement. Conclusions: Bone flap removal and parenteral antibiotic agents remain important in the management of SSI after craniotomy and were associated with less relapse in our study. More studies are needed to better determine the optimal treatment of this infection.

Intraspinal Iliac Venous Stent Migration with Lumbar Nerve Root Compression.

BACKGROUND: Venous stenting is a common treatment for chronic peripheral venous disease. The most frequent complications caused by this technique are stent misplacement and intracardiac or intravascular stent migration. In this publication, we will describe the first case of an intraspinal stent misplacement leading to lumbar nerve root compression. CASE DESCRIPTION: Our patient was a 20-year-old woman with a bilateral pulmonary embolism caused by a right common iliac vein thrombosis and a severe compression of the left common iliac vein by the right common iliac artery (May-Thurner or Cockett syndrome). She underwent an endovascular stenting of the left iliac vein. A few days later, she reported some pain in the right L5 radicular and showed signs of hypoesthesia of the left leg and of paresis of the left extensor hallucis longus muscle. A lumbar computed tomography scan showed a stent misplacement into the spinal canal through the left L5 foramen with nerve root compression. She underwent a surgical removal of the stent through a unilateral L5-S1 laminarthrectomy. The postoperative follow-up showed a complete clinical recovery and a control lumbar computed tomography scan confirmed the L5 nerve root decompression. CONCLUSIONS: The intraspinal misplacement of a venous stent is a rare complication that may cause nerve root injury. It requires a prompt treatment. Surgically removing the stent by a posterior approach seems to be a simple and safe therapeutic option.