Fusobacterium necrophorum meningitis: forgotten complication of a gingivitis]

By now Lemierre's syndrome is a seldom-described disease whose prognosis depends on the precocity of treatment. CASE PRESENTATION: We report the case of an 11-month-old child, with a fulminant Fusobacterium necrophorum meningitis, which derived from a gingival infection, with fatal outcome. CONCLUSION: This atypical case of Lemierre's syndrome (young age occurrence and localisation) underlines the potential severity of F. necrophorum sepsis.     

Depressed host immunity in a case of metachronous primary uterine papillary serous carcinoma and non-Hodgkin''s lymphoma

Metachronous primary malignant tumors of uterine papillary serous carcinoma (UPSC) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) are rare. UPSC is a clinically aggressive and morphologically distinctive variant of endometrial carcinoma. We describe the clinical features of a 63-year-old patient with UPSC that was found 2 years after chemotherapy for malignant lymphoma of neck, stage IV and 5 months after radiation therapy for recurrence. This patient had undergone staging surgery and postoperative radiation for UPSC. One month after completion of radiotherapy, the patient expired due to persistence of the disease. The association between host immunity and UPSC is rarely described in the literature. Immunological profiles of this patient, with compositional changes of natural killer, B, and T cell, dramatically altered the percentage of CD4(+) T cell, CD8(+) T cell, and CD4/CD8 ratio, signifying depressed host immunity. Immunological profile of this patient stressed the issue of depressed host immunity and associated malignancies.     

Conservative treatment of neonatal hydronephrosis.

From February 1990 to January 1991, 19 cases of hydronephrosis in children of less than one year of age were managed at Mackay Memorial Hospital. In the majority of these patients, there were evident causes such as ureteropelvic junction stenosis, ureterovesical reflux or a posterior urethral valve for which definite therapeutic measures were performed. However, some cases had no obvious origins and the hydronephrosis was speculated to be from nonobstructive or physiologic dilatation of the kidneys. The conventional tools, such as intravenous pyelogram or renal ultrasound, which comprise the mainstay of diagnosis, provide limited information on renal functional status. Recent introduction of the Tc-99m diethylene triamine penta-acetic acid (DTPA) diuretic renal scan has enabled us to distinguish between obstructive and nonobstructive hydronephrosis and helps us to determine whether or not surgery is necessary. In the past year, eight patients with hydronephrosis of less than one year of age were diagnosed as nonobstructive after a series of evaluations using renal ultrasound, voiding cystourethrography (VCUG) and Tc-99m DTPA diuretic renal scan. Follow-up studies by echography or DTPA renal scan revealed spontaneous resolution of the dilated collecting systems in these cases and confirms our belief that some hydronephrosis in neonates and infants may resolve spontaneously and may just be a manifestation of physiologic change during development. The value of the Tc-99m DTPA diuretic renal scan in the diagnosis of obstructive uropathy is discussed.     

Comparative study and clinical implementation of two breathing-adapted radiotherapy techniques: dosimetric benefits for lung cancer treatment]

Breathing can lead to organ motions up to several centimeters. For radiotherapy of lung, these motions are generally taken into account by adding a specific margin around the target. Thus, treated volumes are often too large to allow for the high-dose values requested for local control. To manage respiratory motion, deep-inspiration breath-hold technique (DIBH) and gated radiotherapy are starting being used clinically. DIBH consists in asking the patient to perform breath-hold during the treatment and the image acquisition, DIBH level being measured by a spirometer. Gated radiotherapy consists in treating the patient at a certain phase of the free breathing. Linac is synchronized with the motion of a marker located on the patient chest. Planning images are obtained by a four-dimensional CT (4D-CT) using the same marker. We have assessed the value of these two methods. For lung treatment, compared to a standard treatment, toxicity reduction was mainly due to the lung total volume increase. It is therefore more significant for breath-hold approach. It is also due to the reduction of safety margins, which is similar for both methods. These two techniques, which have specific advantages and drawbacks, are used routinely at Curie Institute for a large proportion of lung patients, but also for some breast, liver or even Hodgkin disease treatments.