Should balloon angioplasty and stents have any role in operative intervention for lower extremity ischemia?

p < 0.01). Cumulative combined primary patency at 1 year by life-table methods was 82 ± 10% in the staged group and 83 ± 9% in the simultaneous group (p= 0.79). Mean follow-up was 13 ± 6 months. There is a role for balloon angioplasty and stent placement in operative revascularization of ischemic limbs in selected patients: patency was similar to that produced with the staged approach while the length of stay was shorter. Intraoperative balloon angioplasty is safe and effective and stents permit a measure of control in assuring an optimal intraoperative postangioplasty result.     

Frontal-striatal circuit functions: context, sequence, and consequence.

The exact role of the basal ganglia in both the motor and non-motor domains has proven elusive since it is virtually impossible to refer to its function in isolation of cortical, and especially frontal cortical circuits. The result is that we often speak of frontal-striatal circuits and functions but this still leaves us in the dark when trying to specify basal ganglia information processing. A critical review of the data from both basic science and clinical studies suggests that we should break down processing along a temporal continuum, including the domains of context, sequential information processing, and feedback or reinforcement (i.e., the consequences of action). This analysis would cut across other theoretical constructs, such as attention, central executive, memory, and learning functions, traditionally employed in the neuropsychological literature. Under specified behavioral constraint, the basal ganglia can then be seen to be involved in fundamental aspects of attentional control (often covert), in the guidance of the early stages of learning (especially reinforcement-based, but also encoding strategies in explicit paradigms), and in the associative binding of reward to cue salience and response sequences via dopaminergic mechanisms. Parkinson's disease is considered to offer only a limited view of basal ganglia function due to partial striatal depletion of dopamine and the potential involvement of other structures and transmitters in its pathology. It is hoped that the present formulation will suggest new heuristic research strategies for basal ganglia research, permitting a closer link to be established between neurophysiological, functional imaging and neuropsychological paradigms.     

Deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease dissociates mood and motor circuits: a functional MRI case study.

Behavioral disturbances have been reported with subthalamic (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatment in Parkinson's disease (PD). We report correlative functional imaging (fMRI) of mood and motor responses induced by successive right and left DBS. A 36-year-old woman with medically refractory PD and a history of clinically remitted depression underwent uncomplicated implantation of bilateral STN DBS. High-frequency stimulation of the left electrode improved motor symptoms. Unexpectedly, right DBS alone elicited several reproducible episodes of acute depressive dysphoria. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) imaging was carried out with sequential individual electrode stimulation. The electrode on the left was within the inferior STN, whereas the right electrode was marginally superior and lateral to the intended STN target within the Fields of Forel/zona incerta. fMRI image analysis (Analysis of Functional NeuroImages, AFNI) contrasting OFF versus ON stimulation identified significant lateralized blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal changes with DBS (P < 0.001). Left DBS primarily showed changes in motor regions: increases in premotor and motor cortex, ventrolateral thalamus, putamen, and cerebellum as well as decreases in sensorimotor/supplementary motor cortex. Right DBS showed similar but less extensive change in motor regions. More prominent were the unique increases in superior prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate (Brodmann's area [BA] 24), anterior thalamus, caudate, and brainstem, and marked widespread decreases in medial prefrontal cortex (BA 9/10). The mood disturbance resolved spontaneously in 4 weeks despite identical stimulation parameters. Transient depressive mood induced by subcortical DBS stimulation was correlated with changes in mesolimbic cortical structures. This case provides new evidence supporting cortical segregation of motor and nonmotor cortico-basal ganglionic systems that may converge in close proximity at the level of the STN and the adjacent white matter tracts (Fields of Forel/zona incerta).     

Effect of postchemotherapy nausea and vomiting on health-related quality of life

The purpose was to measure the effects of postchemotherapy nausea and vomiting (PCNV) on health-related quality of life (HQL) in patients receiving either moderately or highly emetogenic chemotherapy. The study sample consisted of 832 chemotherapy-naive patients with cancer who received either moderately or highly emetogenic chemotherapy as part of multicenter trials of new antiemetics. The patients completed the self-report European Organization for Research and Cancer (EORTC) core Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ-C30) before chemotherapy (baseline) and 1 week (day 8) and 2–4 weeks after chemotherapy. They also completed a self-report nausea and vomiting (NV) diary for 5–7 days after chemotherapy. To determine the effects of PCNV on HQL, the change in scores between the baseline and day 8 HQL assessments was calculated for each domain and symptom in the QLQ-C30 and compared in four subgroups of patients: those with both nausea and vomiting, those with nausea but no vomiting, those with no nausea but with vomiting, and those with neither nausea nor vomiting. The group with both nausea and vomiting showed statistically significantly worse physical, cognitive and social functioning, global quality of life, fatigue, anorexia, insomnia and dyspnea as compared to the group with neither nausea nor vomiting (0.0001<P<0.05). Patients with only nausea but no vomiting tended to have less worsening in functioning and symptoms than those having both nausea and vomiting. Increased severity of vomiting (>2 episodes) was associated with worsening of only global quality of life and anorexia as compared with 1–2 episodes of vomiting (0.0001<P<0.01). By 2–4 weeks after chemotherapy all HQL scores had either returned to their baseline levels or were better than baseline. PCNV adversely affects several quality-of-life domains, but patients with only nausea experience less disruption than do those with both nausea and vomiting. Patients with 1–2 episodes of vomiting experience almost the same degree of disruption of HQL as do patients with more than 2 episodes of vomiting.     

Prediction of risk in noncardiac operations after cardiac operations

To determine the preoperative variables affecting the mortality rate and the development of severe complications in patients who have had myocardial revascularization or a valve replacement and who then undergo a noncardiac operation, we retrospectively studied data from 120 such patients over the 5 years from 1982 through 1986. Thirty-six percent of patients had a noncardiac operation during the first month after the cardiac operation. The mortality rate was 11%, and the morbidity rate was 56%. The statistical comparison of the predictive accuracy of postoperative complications of three simple, widely used classifications (American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status, New York Heart Association classification, Massachusetts General Hospital cardiac risk index) demonstrated the superiority of the simplified three-class cardiac risk index (Massachusetts General Hospital-cardiac risk index; predictive accuracy of 84%). In a multivariate discriminant analysis of 21 variables in this population, five variables (myocardial infarction in previous 6 months, S3 gallop or jugular vein distention, arrhythmia on last preoperative electrocardiogram, emergency operation, delay between cardiac and noncardiac operation) were identified as being the most predictive of a postoperative complication. When these variables were used in the function (DF3) obtained by linear discriminant analysis, the prediction accuracy of a postoperative complication reached 83%. Performance of the new models in a prospective validation population remained satisfactory (75% for Massachusetts General Hospital-cardiac risk index three-class index and 72% for DF3). Extensive statistical analysis of our data tested by a validation study provided simple predictive models based on clinical variables easily available even in emergency situations.     

Fluorescence immunohistochemistry and confocal scanning laser microscopy

We have developed a reliable technique for labeling and examining neural structures in soft tissues associated with articular joints and have tested it in human wrist joints under various specimen-related conditions. The labeling protocol employs an immunohistochemical process with a panneuronal marker (PGP 9.5) as the primary antibody and Alexa Fluor 488 as the fluorescing secondary antibody. Imaging was done using a confocal laser scanning microscope, which produced exceptionally detailed three-dimensional images of nerve endings and transiting nerve fibers from thick sections of wrist joint ligaments obtained from human cadavers. The protocol provided a practical postmortem window for specimen acquisition and processing without significant apparent worsening of image quality. The images produced are resistant to fading with repeated exposure to a fluorescent light source, which gives many opportunities for observation. Background staining is minimal, producing high contrast labeling of target tissues, which, in turn, enhances image analysis.