[Diskography--myelography]

One hundred patients were submitted to a prospective, comparative study of metrizamide myelography and discography. In the 32 patients with cervical myelopathy discography yielded no additional information and was thus abandoned. The 68 patients with radiculopathy disease the following results were obtained: In view of the agreement between clinical and myelographic monosegmental findings, discography was considered unnecessary. However, in seven cases with negative myelograms it was possible to show a disc prolapse by discography. When the myelogram was pathological over several segments discography furnished additional information for the differential diagnosis between osteochondrotic or discogenic space-occupying lesions.

Sustained effect of zinc-protamin-glucagon in hyperlipidaemic patients

Is is well known from laboratory investigations and acute intervention studies that glucagon is involved in lipid metabolism. The present study was undertaken in order to evaluate a possible sustained effect of zinc-protamin-glucagon in moderately hyperlipidaemic patients. 4 patients were investigated after an acute bolus dose of glucagon 5 mg intravenously and 16 patients were given zinc-protamin-glucagon 5 mg subcutaneously, b.i.d. for 5 days. A similar degree of decrease of plasma cholesterol and triglycerides was obtained in the acute and chronic study, while the increase in fasting blood sugar and plasma insulin seen in the acute study was not present after 5 days treatment. The effect on plasma triglycerides was much more variable than the effect on plasma cholesterol. Five days after treatment the lipid concentrations had returned to the pretreatment values. The effect could not be predicted from the pretreatment lipid concentrations, neither by the type of hyperlipidaemia present. The decrease in plasma cholesterol and triglycerides were not correlated. The drug might prove useful in the long term research of lipid metabolism and the various complex hormonal interactions.

Cervical disk syndromes: value of metrizamide myelography and diskography

This paper reports on the respective diagnostic values of myelography with water-soluble contrast media and diskography in a study of 100 patients examined between 1979 and 1981 and operated on because of cervical disk disease. The results of the study led to a change of the diagnostic procedures formerly applied in radicular syndromes (i.e., diskography, and then perhaps myelography) and in cervical myelopathy (myelography, rarely followed by diskography). Now cervical metrizamide myelography is always performed first. Diskography is only indicated in radicular syndromes to determine the segment causing clinical symptoms when there is a polysegmental space-occupying lesion on the myelogram in combination with a mono- or oligoradicular neurologic symptomatology; or in the case of a normal myelogram with complaints resistant to conservative treatment.

Treatment of vaginal candidosis with natamycin and effect of treating the partner at the same time

Thirty-three patients with vaginal candidosis were treated with natamycin vaginal tablets for 10 days and their partners were treated double-blind with natamycin cream/placebo cream. Follow-up examinations were carried out one week after the treatment was discontinued and again about one month later. The cure rate in patients having actively treated partners was 94%, not differing significantly from the cure rate of 88% in patients whose partners had been treated with placebo. One month after the treatment there was a high recurrence/re-infection rate, about 30% in both groups. Thus, treating the partners of patients with vaginal candidosis has no influence upon the therapeutic outcome or recurrence rate. The recurrence is presumably due to re-infection from the patient herself.