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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

BERRY (saccular) Aneurysm

A saccular aneurysm resembles a small sack. A berry (haha yeah thats right berry) aneurysm is usually saccular. When the blood vessel weakens it can bulge out and eventually could rupture and create internal bleeding which could lead to death if untaken care of. Some options are surgery by placing a clip or stabilize the vessel with a stent if it could help. Also they can divert the blood if it isnt a very large vessel that wouldnt put the risk to high.Some rare symptoms that have happen to two patients when they described to have an unusual cause of transient ischemic attacks due to berry aneurysms of the extracranial part of the internal carotid artery. Obviously we all know what they are and i just wanted to show some cool pictures of this and just make you all aware of such a scary problem but still happens to have a cool name. ;)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Nasal polyps






What are nasal polyps?



Paranasal sinuses are air cavities within the skull that open into the nose. If the soft tissue lining of the sinuses becomes inflamed or swollen, it fills the surounding space and can then expand into the nose forming a growth called a polyp. There are a lot of small sinuses between the eye and the nose, when polyps do occur, there will usually be a bunch of them. When they are large they can block the normal breathing pattern. Sometimes they can be treated with nasal sprays, but if it is serious they can be removed with surgery with an endoscope. They can be identified with a ct image or MRI scan. They are very obvious because they fill the spaces. Although they can be removed, polyps can grow back so basically they are very annoying.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

CAVERNOUS HEMANGIOMA OF ORBIT




Cavernous hemangioma of the orbit are hamartomatous, vascular lesions, more frequent in middle aged women. They represent the most common benign primitive neoplasm of the orbit. They usually involve large groupings of blood vessels and can be removed with surgery with high risk due to locations near vital arteries. They also create blood clots that use so many platelets that the bone marrow can not keep up the production for the demand. Oral steroids can be used to reduce the size of these growths, but for serious cases surgery is the primary choice.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

What is Acromegaly?

Acromegaly is a hormonal disorder that usually occurs in middle aged men and women. There is about 5,000 cases per million people in the world. This is actually higher than I would have expected. The symptoms develope over time and usually affect extremities. Patients with acromegaly often suffer from headaches, excessive sweating, joint disorders, soft tissue swelling and a progressive coarsening of facial features and enlargement of the hands, feet and jaw. People that havent been treated face a mortality rate two to four times higher than average people.The word Acromegaly means great extremities. It affects the pituitary gland causing it to produce to much growth hormone. I would classify these people as giants of the world because of there great size. I know as a child that one of my favorite actors Richard Kiel reminds me of this condition. He lived a long life with this disease. He played the famous villian named "Jaws" in the James Bond series and some might know him as the crazy boss of Happy Gilmore in the movie Happy Gilmore. Information gathered from emedicine.com.