pathtalk.org is a weblog about pathology and laboratory medicine.

An unusual case of CADASIL? Or something else?

I recently did a brain autopsy on a 70-year-old woman who died from an intraparenchymal brain hemorrhage after a seven-year history of progressive dementia. The gross photograph follows:

I know what you’re thinking: an amyloid angiopathic bleed, or perhaps a hypertensive bleed, in a patient with Alzheimer disease. That’s what I was thinking until I saw [...]

Virtual Autopsy on a Multi-Touch Table

The Virtual Autopsy Table (developed by Norrköping Visualization Centre and the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization in Sweden) makes use of high resolution CT And MRI. The images are rendered and processed into 3D models which can be manipulated using a the table’s multi-touch interface.
From the website:
The technique used in this table [...]

Study sheds light on Huntington disease with implications for other neurodegenerative disorders

A common theme among neurodegenerative diseases is that there is a some kind of “nucleating protein” which aggregates within specific areas of the brain. There is debate as to whether the aggregates cause disease, or are simply an attempt by brain cells to sequester bad proteins. If the former is true, then therapy should be [...]

Autopsy article in the New York Times

The New York Times featured a short piece about autopsies yesterday. The article takes a somewhat skeptical tone in places:

We looked at each other, my surviving sister and I, and said no. It wouldn’t bring her back. We had had enough. We wanted to get on with funeral plans. Another reason, I realized [...]

Hepatitis in a Lung Transplant Recipient

Clinical Presentation
A 33 year-old woman with cystic fibrosis who underwent bilateral orthotopic lung transplantation twelve weeks ago presented to the emergency department complaining of increasingly severe right upper quadrant pain of one week’s duration. Physical examination was remarkable for moderate jaundice and marked right upper quadrant tenderness to palpation. Liver function testing revealed [...]

Giant cell pneumonia with DiGeorge syndrome

Clinical History
A 7 month-old male was admitted for severe pneumonia with respiratory compromise. Laboratory studies demonstrated leukocytosis and profound hypocalcemia. An inherited immunodeficiency syndrome was suspected. A CT scan of the chest revealed bilateral lobar pneumonia, and no thymus was seen. Dual-probe fluoresence in-situ hybridization for deletions of 10p13p14 and [...]