Reducing potential liability in evaluation of the breast.

One in nine women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. It is crucial to evaluate the breast with a three-part approach: self breast examination, annual physician breast examinations, and mammography. In addition, and of equal importance, is proper documentation of the findings and communication between the physicians involved.

The retrotracheal triangle.

The retrotracheal triangle is an area in the posterior superior mediastinum where abnormal structures may be detected in as many as 2% of chest radiographs. The authors describe the anatomy of this space and the abnormalities found therein, including vascular abnormalities (aberrant right subclavian artery, right aortic arch, double aortic arch, true and false aortic aneurysms), thoracic duct lesions, esophageal abnormalities (benign and malignant tumors, congenital atresia, duplication cysts, foreign bodies, diverticula, and achalasia), and miscellaneous entities (intrathoracic thyroid, bronchogenic cyst, bronchogenic carcinoma, cystic hygroma, and emphysema). Careful attention to this long-neglected area on chest radiographs can yield findings of abnormalities not otherwise suspected.

Pulmonary nodules secondary to total parenteral alimentation.

A seven-year-old male, who had a retro-peritoneal alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma and was on total parenteral alimentation (TPN) developed multiple pulmonary nodules, indistinguishable from metastases. These proved to be multiple lipid emboli on open biopsy.

Medial septal lesions disrupt spatial mapping ability in rats.

Rats with lesions of the medial septum were more likely to begin swimming in the wrong direction, swim farther, and, therefore, require more time to find a platform hidden in a Morris water tank than were control rats. Although the performance of the rats with medial septal lesions did improve over trials, their asymptotic performance also failed to equal that of the controls. Movement of the platform to a new position in the tank disrupted the performance of both groups, and, again, the rats with medial septal lesions were slower to locate the moved platform. However, this deficit was completely eliminated when a visual cue indicating the location of the moved platform was introduced. We suggest that these data indicate that damage to the septo-hippocampal cholinergic projection system produces a deficit in the formation or utilization of a spatial map (reference memory) that represents the location of a place with respect to the surrounding distal cues.