Cyclical calendar and lunar patterns in automobile property accidents and injury accidents

Nine years of traffic accidents involving damage to property (n = 246,926 accidents) and involving nonfatal injury (n = 50,492) in Saskatchewan were examined by regression and spectral analyses. Both calendar and seasonal periodicities were found in both sets of data. After data were adjusted for calendar effects, no relationship was found with the total or half synodic and anomalistic lunar cycles or between the waxing and waning synodic cycle. No sudden change on the day of the full moon or surrounding days was found.     

Event-related potentials (P300) in primary headache in childhood and adolescence

There is strong evidence for a loss of habituation during cognitive processing in migraine as measured by P300 and contingent negative variation in adults. Event-related potentials evoked by an oddball paradigm have not yet been studied in children and adolescents suffering from different primary headache types. We recorded visually evoked event-related potentials (two consecutive trials, 200 stimuli each) in 48 children and adolescents suffering from migraine without or with aura, from episodic tension-type headache, and from ergotamine-induced headache and analyzed the latencies, amplitudes, and reaction times. No statistically significant differences were noted between all headache types and healthy controls analyzing the averaged parameters for the whole measurement. However, a highly significant loss of cortical habituation as measured by P300 amplitude and latency could be observed in migraine without and with aura by analyzing the first and the second trial of measurement separately. This phenomenon increased with age and could not be seen in healthy controls, or patients with tension-type headache or ergotamine-induced headache. Our data suggest a specific cognitive processing in migraine even in children and adolescents. Measurement of the habituation effect in P300 latency and amplitude provides a specific method to differentiate between primary headache types in childhood and adolescence.     

Differential diagnosis of a mass in the upper lateral neck

The differential diagnosis and the duration of symptoms are presented for a group of 288 patients encountered over a ten-year period with a mass in the region of the neck behind and below the angle of the mandible. While infections constituted the largest aetiological group (48.3 per cent), 109 cases (37.9 per cent) had some form of neoplasia, with malignancy being found in 48 (16.6 per cent). The duration of symptoms varied widely, only the acute infections having an acceptably short delay prior to hospital admission. The mean symptom duration for all the neoplastic cases was in excess of five months.     

Adenoid squamous carcinoma of the conjunctiva--a clinicopathological study of 14 cases

Idiopathic or congenital coronary artery ectasias and aneurysms are uncommon forms of coronary artery disease. The prognosis and optimal management of such patients remains unknown. The authors describe the case of an otherwise healthy 30-year-old man with concomitant severe right coronary artery ectasia and left main coronary artery aneurysm who sustained a mild anterior myocardial infarction. There was no obstructive coronary artery disease, and no cause for the lesions could be identified. Chronic anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy were initiated with resolution of symptoms.     

Spirometry in life-long non-smoking, healthy Chinese women in Taiwan

To establish the spirometric values for normal, healthy Chinese women in Taiwan, the spirometry of 506 life-long non-smoking, healthy Chinese women was examined, including 140 subjects over the age of 60 years. Significant correlations among age, height and forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), FEV1/FVC%, peak expiratory flow (PEF), Vmax75, Vmax50, Vmax25 were found. However, there were no significant correlations between age and FEV1/FVC%, nor age and Vmax25 in the elderly group. FEV1 (FEV1*) and FVC (FVC*) were standardized to the overall mean height for elderly women using Cole's formula. The decline in FEV1* and FVC* with age were observed. The predicted value for the average 70-year-old woman with a height of 1.5 m derived from the present study is compared with those from other surveys of the elderly. The values from the present study are somewhat higher than the values from the Hong Kong study. The authors believe the fact that all of the present subjects were life-long non-smokers might explain the differences.