Alveolar hydatid disease of the liver: Brief review and spectrum of adjacent organ invasion

The purpose of this study is to show the spectrum of adjacent organ invasion and to make a brief review of hepatic alveolar hydatid disease (AHD), using CT and MR imaging. We retrospectively reviewed CT and MR images of three patients with various adjacent organ invasions surgically and histologically proven to be AHD. Local invasion to right kidney and adrenal, right hemidiaphragm and lung were detected in one patient, right adrenal in another patient and gall bladder, duodenum, gastric wall and pancreas invasion in the other. AHD may rarely extend to the gall bladder, stomach, duodenum, pancreas, right adrenal and kidney, diaphragm, pleura and lung. The extension of the disease outside the liver is usually encountered in patients with large, peripherally located masses in the advanced stage of the disease.     

Deprivation of form vision suppresses diurnal cycling of retinal levels of leu-enkephalin

Deprivation of form vision by the fitting of translucent occluders suppressed the diurnal cycling of enkephalinergic amacrine cells (the ENSLI amacrine cells), in the chicken. Daily periods of normal vision or enforcing temporal contrast using strobe lighting appeared to restore normal functioning of the ENSLI cells. These results suggest that the ENSLI cells are involved in retinal circuits that assess the quality of the visual image and control eye growth.     

The use of 99mTc-DTPA for detection and localization of site of acute gastrointestinal bleeding

Intravenously injected 99mTc-DTPA was evaluated in 64 patients for its efficiency in detecting and localizing sites of acute upper and lower gastrointestinal (G.I.) bleeding. These studies were correlated with endoscopic and surgical findings. There were 34 bleeders and 30 non bleeders giving a sensitivity of 90%, specificity of 82% and accuracy of 86%. Of these, 49 were upper G.I. studies (stomach 21 and duodenum 28) and 15 were lower G.I. studies (small intestine 8, large bowel 7). Of the 49 upper G.I. studies, 27 showed active bleeding while 22 showed no bleeding at the time of the study resulting in a sensitivity of 87.5%, specificity of 76% and accuracy of 82%. Of the 15 lower G.I. studies, 7 were bleeders while 8 were non bleeders. All the lower G.I. bleeding sites were accurately localized with the 99mTc-DTPA. An incidental finding of these studies was the localization of 99mTc-DTPA in the site of inflammatory and malignant lesions of the G.I. tract. Of the 64 studies, 18 inflammatory and malignant lesions were detected with the IV injected 99mTc-DTPA; 10 were bleeders while 8 were non bleeders. Image subtraction of early from delayed images was helpful to differentiate bleeding from non bleeding cases in this last group of studies.