Lateral orientation, eye movements and dichotic listening.

Past studies have found that lateral orientation (eye or head turn) may influence hemispheric asymmetry on the dichotic listening task. The present work studied the effects of forced head and eye turn on a consonant-vowel dichotic test. Spontaneous conjugate lateral eye movements (CLEM) in response to questions were also measured. The subjects were 29 male and 25 female right-handed university students. The dichotic test was administered using a forced-attention method rather than free recall in order to control for attentional bias. As predicted, right lookers on the CLEM test, showed an enhanced right ear advantage while left lookers showed a diminished right ear advantage. This suggests that characteristic hemispheric arousal may enhance or inhibit asymmetry on perceptual laterality tests. No relationship was found between dichotic listening and forced head or eye turning. It was noted that past experiments may have failed to control for the attentional bias introduced by having the head or eyes turned to one direction.     

The effect of naloxone on the preoperative gastric volume and pH

The effect of 4 mg oral naloxone on preoperative gastric volume and pH of gastric aspirate was studied in a double-blind, randomized study. Twenty patients received 10 ml of naloxone (4 mg) mixed with 10 ml of orange juice, and 20 patients received 10 ml of isotonic saline mixed with 10 ml of orange juice, 2 h before surgery. Gastric content was obtained immediately after intubation of the trachea. No significant difference in gastric volume and pH of gastric aspirate was found between the two groups. It is concluded that naloxone does not affect gastric emptying and gastric acid secretion to a degree great enough to protect against aspiration of gastric contents into the lungs.     

Hyperhomocysteinaemia as a risk factor for deep-vein thrombosis.

OBJECTIVE: Several studies have shown a relation between hyperhomocysteinaemia and vascular disease. To assess the risk of deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) associated with hyperhomocysteinaemia, we studied plasma homocysteine levels in patients with deep-vein thrombosis and in normal control subjects. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We measured plasma homocysteine levels in 48 patients with deep-vein thrombosis and in 33 healthy controls matched to the patients according to age and sex. Plasma homocysteine levels were measured with high performance liquid chromatography and fluorescence detection. Hyperhomocysteinaemia was defined as a plasma homocysteine level about 15 micromol/L in both groups. The diagnosis of all patients with deep-vein thrombosis (n=48) was verified by Doppler ultrasonography. RESULTS: Plasma homocysteine levels were found to be increased in the deep-vein thrombosis group compared the control group (p<0.001, t-test). The mean plasma homocysteine level in the patients was 17.1 SD 5.13 micromol/L (range 6.4-31.3), and that in the controls was 9.0 SD 1.27 micromol/L (range 6.0-11.5). The association between elevated homocysteine levels and venous thrombosis was stronger among men than among women. CONCLUSIONS: The increased plasma homocysteine levels we have observed may have a causative role in the development of deep-vein thrombosis.