B-mode and color Doppler imaging of carotid paragangliomas in different neck regions

Neurological Manifestations of Paragangliomas of the Head and Neck

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

This paper will outline the clinical neurologic presentation and diagnostic evaluation of patients with paragangliomas of the head and neck. Contemporary management options will be outlined for these rare and complex tumors.

RECENT FINDINGS

The majority of recent publications and research on these tumors are dedicated to traditional and robotic image-guided radiosurgery in the treatment of head and neck paragangliomas. Paragangliomas are rare, slow-growing tumors of the head and neck which usually cause silent cranial nerve deficits or compensated mild speech or swallowing symptoms. While radiologic surveillance is often the best treatment option, subtotal resection with case-specific radiosurgery is commonly used in patients with large tumors.

Evaluation of the visibility of peri-implant bone defects using ultrasonography with two types of probes

Background: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of intraoral and extraoral ultrasonography evaluations performed with two different types of probes (linear and “hockey stick”) for the visibility of peri-implant bone defects. Material and methods: Fourteen implants were inserted into sheep heads. Peri-implant bone defects were created without knowing the depth, which served as the gold standard for the defects. The defects were scanned with two different probe types (linear and hockey stick probes) extraorally and intraorally, using two different ultrasonography systems. For intra- and interobserver agreements for each probe types, Kappa coefficients were calculated. Results: The lowest ICC values were found in both intra- (ICC = 0.696) and interobserver reliability (ICC = 0.762) obtained with the extraorally used linear probe. There was a high agreement with the gold standard when using hockey sticky probes intraorally. For both linear probes, there were no significant differences in agreement among the two observers and the gold standard (p >0.05). Conclusions: High agreement was found when using high-frequency hockey stick probes intraorally, which means that they can be used with good effect for the evaluation of the visibility of peri-implant bone defects. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first one on this subject. Thus, it can be stated that US can be an alternative method of examining defects. However, further studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of US in visualizing peri-implant bone defects.