The analgesic effect of intraventricular somatostatin-14 (SOM-14), arginine vasopressin (AVP), and oxytocin (OT) were tested in one terminally ill cancer patient with a diffuse mesothelioma suffering intractable continuous and incapacitating thoracic pain. SOM-14 reduced pain by 90% for 48 min; AVP reduced pain by 95% for 75 min, and OT reduced pain by 88% for 77 min. The only notable side effects were seen after the administration of AVP, which induced anesthesia and flaccid paralysis of the lower limbs, from which the patient fully recovered after 20 h.
Results from this study suggest that neurocysticercosis is a risk factor for cerebral glioma. The intense astrocytic gliosis that surrounds calcified cysticerci, together with the suppression of the cellular immune response induced by cysticerci, may contribute to the development of malignant glial cells in patients with neurocysticercosis.
Tc99m-Dextran provided good definition of lymph channels and sentinel node localization, without the risks related to the use of potentially hazardous labeled materials of biological origin.
Gamma knife surgery is often used for treatment of brain metastases. A stereotactically-guided biopsy is performed to confirm the diagnosis in doubtful cases. Tumor cells that may spread as a result of the biopsy may survive and grow after gamma knife surgery, leaving a metastatic seeding through the biopsy tract. In this 45-year-old man, with a biopsy-proven metastatic adenocarcinoma, seeding was noticed after gamma knife surgery (Figure). This rare complication should be kept in mind when evaluating patients with brain metastases undergoing stereotactic biopsy followed by gamma knife surgery and not conventional radiation 1 .
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