✓ A long-term study has been made of a consecutive series of 37 patients with brain stem gliomas, 22 of whom were children and 15 adults. Surgical exploration was carried out in 34 of the 37 cases and only very rarely was a diagnosis made on clinical grounds or air study alone. In 10 cases a histological diagnosis was made at operation. In five patients a significantly large neoplastic cyst was found and evacuated, and four of these have had long-term useful survivals. There were nine postoperative deaths, most of them in the pre-Decadron era; 17 cases died during follow-up, with a mean survival of 33 months; and eight patients are living, with a mean survival of 3 months to 9 years. A plea is made for surgical exploration of these lesions in the hope of finding a surgically approachable cyst, and for the use of radiation therapy at a later time.

~' This study demonstrates that the tissue pOz of the normal spinal cord of dogs can be modified by ventilating the animals with oxygen and carbogen. Following trauma to the cord, the tissue pO~ responded only to hyperbaric oxygen. A series of animals rendered paraplegic and treated with hyperbaric oxygen recovered to a greater degree than those in an untreated control group.

A controlled series of adult mongrel dogs were rendered paraplegic by traumatizing the thoracic spinal cord. Those animals treated with local hypothermia, whether immediately or after a delay, recovered to a significantly greater degree than the untreated group. Spinal cord pO2 studies revealed a marked fall in the pO2 at the area of maximal injury over a 30-min period. The severe hypoxia lasted at least 7 hours. Pathological studies showed the varying degrees of injury produced. It is postulated that local hypothermia may be effective in altering the clinical recovery by decreasing the tissue metabolism at the site of injury.KEY WORDS spinal cord 9 hypothermia paraplegia 9 tissue pOe * Yellow Springs Instrument Co., Inc., Yellow Springs, Ohio.

A 31-year-old woman with an 11-year history of unilateral paroxysmal olfactory hallucinations was cured by resection of the homolateral olfactory bulb, which was believed to be the site of origin of the noxious smell.

No abstract