A deceptive cervical lymph node: a solitary spinal osteochondroma.

INTRODUCTION: Osteochondroma of the cervical spine is an uncommon bony tumour. CLINICAL PICTURE: We present a case which was misdiagnosed as a posterior cervical lymph node. The patient presented with a tender neck lump and was seen by two surgical departments. They eventually diagnosed it as an osteochondroma and referred the patient to our department. This exostosis arose from the lamina of C3 vertebra and extended posteriorly. The patient presented with persistent neck ache but had no neurological deficit. TREATMENT: It was excised uneventfully. CONCLUSION: From the literature review, this appears to be the first case where an exostosis arose from a spinal facet joint. A discussion of osteochondromas follows.

Thermal burns in diabetic feet.

Many patients with diabetes can lead a full life without developing diabetic lesions in their feet. This is because these patients have avoided the precipitating factors of which the most important is mechanical trauma and infections. We present five cases of diabetic patients who, out of ignorance, listened to bad advice by using hot therapy to treat their peripheral neuropathy. This resulted in burns and secondary infections. All of them required large surgical debridement and prolonged costly hospital stay to treat their condition. Fortunately, none of them required amputation. This paper hopes to highlight the dangers of self treatment and medication in diabetic foot lesions.

Use of prostate specific antigen (PSA) and transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) in the diagnosis of prostate cancer--a local experience.

Prostate specific antigen (PSA) and transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) are two new modalities added to improve our ability to diagnose prostate cancer at an early stage. We reviewed our own experience of 100 cancers among 579 men from August 1991 to October1994. The detection rate was 17.3%. Digital rectal examination (DRE) alone had a positive predictive value (PPV) of 39.9%. The PPV for PSA was 23%. The combination of PSA and DRE gave a PPV of 47.2%. TRUS had a PPV of 30.6%. Features of cancer on TRUS may be both hypoechoic or hyperechoic nodules which appeared to have almost equal proportions associated with cancer. The addition of age-specific ranges did not affect the PPV of PSA. The PPV of the combination of TRUS and DRE was 53%. With all 3 modalities combined, the PPV was 58.8%. An interesting finding from the study was the higher average PSA for benign and malignant disease in the local population and cases of acute retention of urine. There was a higher incidence of prostatitis and lower incidence of cancer in cases with retention of urine.