Psychotropic prescribing patterns of nonpsychiatric residents in a general hospital in 1973 and 1982

The findings of a study of the frequency and type of psychotropic drugs that nonpsychiatric residents prescribed for nonpsychiatric patients in a teaching hospital in 1982 were compared with the findings of a similar study in the same hospital nine years earlier. The overall percentage of patients receiving psychotropic drugs remained almost the same, at less than 10 percent. However, in 1982 residents prescribed antidepressants almost four times as often as in 1973, and the use of antianxiety agents decreased. Deficiencies in chart documentation of psychotropic prescribing and the tendency to use conservative dosages remained unchanged from the earlier study.     

Carcinoma of the gallbladder

Gallbladder carcinoma is the fourth commonest gastrointestinal malignancy. Its growth is insidious and the majority of cases are advanced at the time of diagnosis. The recognized radiological features occur only in those with advanced disease. Cholecystectomy may be curative when carcinoma is confined to the gallbladder but the place of extensive surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy is unproven.     

The proliferative T-lymphocyte response to streptokinase

Purified streptokinase was found to initiate a proliferative T-lymphocyte response. The response was characterized by dose-response and kinetics investigations. Streptokinase did not initiate any response when tested on T lymphocytes from newborns, thus indicating that the proliferative T-lymphocyte response to streptokinase in vitro is an antigen stimulated activation of T lymphocytes from individuals previously sensitized in vivo. Of healthy individuals, 40% (16 out of 40 tested) showed a significant proliferative response to streptokinase. Methylprednisolone, cyclosporin A, theophyllamine and verapamil all inhibited the streptokinase-stimulated proliferative T-lymphocyte responses in a dose-dependent manner.     

Localization of epileptogenic foci using a simple reference-subtraction montage to document small interchannel time differences

We present a modified EEG montage that detects small interchannel time differences and assists in localizing the epileptogenic focus. Regions with apparently synchronous epileptic discharges are displayed simultaneously in referential and subtraction derivations. The subtraction derivation is a bipolar configuration of two regions of interest that are not necessarily adjacent. The referential derivation reveals the polarity, voltage, and morphology of the two discharges, and the subtraction derivation detects asynchrony; the combined reference-subtraction derivation thus indicates the region that is activated first.     

Dissociative anesthesia and striatal neuronal electrophysiology.

Compared with results obtained in locally anesthetized, paralyzed rats, the dissociative anesthetic ketamine did not alter either the number of spontaneously active striatal neurons or the basal firing rate of striatal neurons; 90% of these cells exhibited the type I striatal neuron waveform. Chloral hydrate anesthesia suppressed both the occurrence and the firing rate of spontaneously active type I cells, but did not alter the activity of type II striatal neurons. Cortical stimulation preferentially activated type II cells in paralyzed rats and in chloral hydrate-anesthetized rats. Thus, under dissociative anesthesia it is possible to study spontaneously active type I striatal neurons. However, a method of activation such as cortical stimulation is necessary to study type II striatal neurons.