[First clinical manifestation of chronic hepatitis C in painless progressive atrophic monoparesis of the right leg]. / Klinische Erstmanifestation einer chronischen Hepatitis C bei schmerzloser progredienter atrophischer Monoparese des rechten Beines.

HISTORY AND CLINICAL FINDINGS: A 60-year-old male patient was admitted with a painless reduction in the circumference of the right calf with mild gait disturbance that had been increasing for 6 months. Neurological findings included atrophic monoparesis of the right lower leg with preserved muscle reflexes without sensory disturbances. INVESTIGATIONS: Electrophysiologically and neuroradiologically, only the right triceps surae muscle showed signs of combined acute and chronic damage and marked atrophy with diffuse muscle oedema. With elevated liver enzymes, previously unknown positive hepatitis C serology and high hepatitis C viral load in serum, even pleocytosis with very low viral load was detectable in the CSF. DIAGNOSIS: A diagnosis of hepatitis C-associated mononeuropathy of the right sciatic nerve with focal involvement of the right tibial nerve was made. THERAPY AND COURSE: After therapy with Sofosbuvir and Velpatasvir, no further progression of the monoparesis occurred during the further course. CONCLUSIONS: Chronic hepatitis C may be rarely associated with painless progressive monoparesis. With regard to pathogenesis, the significance of CSF requires further studies.

Multicenter evaluation of noninvasive cardiac output measurement by bioreactance technique.

OBJECTIVES: Bioreactance, the analysis of intrabeat variations in phase of a transthoracic voltage in response to an applied high frequency transthoracic current, was recently introduced for noninvasive cardiac output measurement (NICOM). We evaluated NICOM compared to thermo- dilution (TD) in several clinical settings. METHODS: 111 patients with a clinical indication for TD cardiac output (CO) measurement were recruited at five centers, including patients in cardiac catheterization laboratories, cardiac care units and intensive care units. CO measurements were made simulta- neously with TD and the bioreactance method and compared by regression analysis. RESULTS: For studies in the intensive care units, TD-based CO and NICOM were highly correlated (r = 0.78, P < 0.0001) and did not differ significantly from each other (P = 0.55). Results in the cardiac catheterization laboratory were similar (r = 0.71, P < 0.001; P = 0.28 NICOM versus TD). In subsets of patients, NICOM was shown to be better corre- lated with TD-CO than CO obtained with the Fick method or with standard bioimpedance-based measurements of CO. CONCLUSIONS: On average, compared to TD, bioreactance- based NICOM has acceptable accuracy in challenging clinical environments. Availability of such a tool may allow clinicians to have information about CO in patients where this information is not currently available to help diagnosis and guide therapy.