Absolute ethanol was used to perform nine transcatheter embolizations and 21 direct percutaneous puncture embolizations in eight patients with unresectable vascular malformations. Six patients had arteriovenous malformations and two patients had hemangiomas. Four of these patients had undergone unsuccessful surgery, and the other four were not considered candidates for operation. All large complex symptomatic vascular malformations (SVMs) required multiple embolizations that were staged procedures. Ethanol embolotherapy, performed according to strict techniques, has proved efficacious in the management of SVMs.

Fifty calcified intracranial lesions diagnosed with computed tomography (CT) were evaluated with magnetic resonance (MR) using a spin-echo sequence. MR images demonstrated 41 of 50 lesions seen as calcified on CT scans, among them 29 of 30 cerebral neoplasms and all ten arteriovenous malformations. The presence of calcification was suspected prospectively in about 60% of calcified lesions but was also suspected in 45% of uncalcified lesions (reviewed as control cases). No fine calcifications and only 25% of punctate calcifications were disclosed on MR images. In the nine lesions undetected by MR, calcification was the only abnormal CT finding. The findings of calcification on MR images were nonspecific, ranging from signal void or signal dampening on all sequences to no alteration of signal intensity. The most common finding of calcification was a focus of signal diminution, rather than signal void, as commonly reported.

We report o a baby from an Arab family with Raine syndrome. The baby presented at birth with severe craniofacial anomalies including a wide anterior fontanelle, exophthalmos, severe depression of the nasal bridge with a hypoplastic midface, bilateral choanal atresia and a large protruding tongue. All the limbs were short and the thorax was small. Radiologically there was increased bone density in some bones, periosteal new bone formation and marked bowing of the femurs, tibiae, and ulnae. We suggest that osteosclerosis in Raine syndrome is not necessarily severe and generalized, and bowing of the long bones is another variable radiological feature of the syndrome.

No abstract

Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty of the infrarenal abdominal aorta has been reported by a few authors. In the present series, aortic stenoses in 32 patients were treated with various percutaneous angioplasty techniques. Isolated aortic stenoses and primary aortic stenoses extending into the iliac arteries were successfully dilated. The initial success rate was 100%, without evidence of rupture, thrombosis, dissection, or distal embolization. In only three of the 28 patients who returned for follow-up did symptoms recur or noninvasive vascular laboratory indexes deteriorate (mean follow-up, 25 months). Percutaneous transluminal aortic angioplasty has proved safe and efficacious in the treatment of atherosclerotic aortic stenoses.