Franco Benech

• University of Turin

Background Traditional minimally invasive fluoroscopy-based techniques for pedicle screw placement utilize guidance, which may require fluoroscopic shots. Computerized tomography (CT) navigation results in more accurate screw placement. Robotic surgery seeks to establish access and trajectory with greater accuracy. Objective This study evaluated t...

Background: Traditional minimally invasive fluoroscopy-based techniques for pedicle screw placement utilize guidance, which may require fluoroscopic shots. Computerized tomography (CT) navigation results in more accurate screw placement. Robotic surgery seeks to establish access and trajectory with greater accuracy. Objective: This study evaluated...

Computer-aided navigation and robotic guidance systems have become widespread in their utilization for spine surgery. A recent innovation combines these two advances, which theoretically provides accuracy in spinal screw placement. This study describes the cortical and pedicle screw accuracy for the first 54 cases where navigated robotic assistance...

Objective: We describe a stimulus-evoked EMG approach to minimize false negative results in detecting pedicle breaches during lumbosacral spinal instrumentation. Methods: In 36 patients receiving 176 lumbosacral pedicle screws, EMG threshold to nerve root activation was determined using a focal probe inserted into the pilot hole at a depth, cust...

Introduction Triggered electromyography is widely used in predicting pedicle wall break after placement of pedicle screw instrumentation. However, common experience confirms that the technique fails to detect medial pedicle breaches more often than expected, the occurrence of false negative results being the most unpleasant bias. This probably resu...

Objective: To verify the safety and clinical use of non-invasive high-voltage electrical stimulation (HVES) in patients with compressive radiculopathy. To test the feasibility of HVES to survey nerve root function during lumbosacral surgery. Methods: In 20 patients undergoing lumbosacral surgery for degenerative spinal diseases, compound muscle...

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was proposed as a target for antiangiogenetic therapy in high-grade gliomas. We tested the efficacy of solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) carrying VEGF antisense oligonucleotides to down-regulate VEGF expression in an in vitro and in vivo rat glioma model. In vitro: rat C6 glioma cells under hypoxic condition...

"Tumour-to-tumour" phenomenon is a rare event; meningioma has been reported as the most common primary intracranial tumour to harbour metastases, the majority of which arise from breast and lung carcinomas. Several hypotheses have been previously proposed to explain this occurrence, but the exact mechanisms responsible for the development of metast...

Although in vitro skin absorption studies often detect small residues of applied test material in the epidermis/dermis, it is uncertain whether the residue is within the living skin. We studied the dermal absorption of a hair dye hydroxyanthraquinone-aminopropyl methyl morpholinium methosulphate (HAM) in human skin in vivo and in vitro. In vivo, sk...

The aim of this study was to verify the presence of angiographic vasospasm in patients with transcranial Doppler (TCD) of high velocities after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Seven hundred and eighty-six cases admitted within 48 hours after SAH due to the rupture of anterior circulation aneurysm, were prospectively studied with TCD. In cases of TCD...

Percutaneous penetration studies are usually performed in human skin samples set up in a Franz cell device. The ability to perform these studies may depend on the availability of skin samples. Reconstructed skin models are an interesting alternative to overcome such limitations but are less easily mounted in diffusion cell devices. Previous data sh...

Cystic acoustic neuromas are less frequent than solid ones and present different clinical and radiological features. Cystic schwannomas are larger, show a shorter clinical history and a different risk of postoperative complications. This study was designed to compare surgical results and complications of solid and cystic vestibular schwannomas of m...

Background. Vestibular nerve section is considered to be the most effective surgical procedure to control intractable symptoms secondary to Menière’s disease (MD). This study was developed to analyze the adequacy of retrosigmoid vestibular neurectomy in terms of vertigo control, hearing preservation and clinical complications of this procedure. Met...

The potential human health risk of UV filters depends on their toxicity and the human systemic exposure which is a function of the extent of percutaneous absorption of the topically applied substance into the human organism. Using a 'mass balance' approach, a study was designed to investigate the systemically absorbed dose of [(14)C]-Mexoryl SX((R)...

Craniopharyngiomas are epithelial tumors of the suprasellar region, unanimously defined as benign. Despite the benign histological aspect and apparent gross total resection achieved in a proportion of cases, recurrence rate remains about 30% at 10 years. The role of 7 pathological factors as predictors of recurrence and clinical outcome in cranioph...

Human skin models, such as EpiDerm and Episkin, are not easily mounted into static or dynamic diffusion cells that are commonly used to perform bioavailability studies with human skin ex vivo. For various reasons, such as fragility, small sample size, and other morphological constraints, skin absorption studies with human skin models are often carr...

The best management of patients with brain metastases from an unknown primary tumour is still unclear, as data are scarce and studies are retrospective. We report 33 patients with biopsy-proven brain metastases from a primary tumour not found at the first investigations, who were treated by surgery and/or radiotherapy and followed with serial CT un...

Lipomatous medulloblastoma is a recently identified clinicopathological entity, characterized by areas of lipomatous differentiation, manifestation in adults, and apparently by a favorable prognosis. In our series of medulloblastomas of adults and children we have found lipidized cells within the tumor in 6 out of 78 cases of adults and in 8 out of...

Appropriate evaluation of sunscreens is required to provide better knowledge of their safety and efficacy. One of the most important elements of this evaluation is the assessment of percutaneous absorption. In vitro methods are largely used for such assessments, and the accuracy of the measurements generated with these methods depends on the use of...

Summary We analyzed a series of 142 patients suffering a frontobasal injury severe enough to produce a frontobasal fracture. High velocity trauma was the cause of injury in 95 patients (67%). A frontobasal fracture was the only noticeable lesion in 27 cases (19%). It was associated with maxillo-facial fractures in 79 patients (56%), with intracrani...

The following guidelines present an in vitro alternative, which uses excised animal or human skin, to experiments conducted in vivo on animals or humans for the assessment of dermal absorption and percutaneous penetration. Both aspects are essential for the risk assessment of chemicals which may contact and subsequently penetrate the skin.There are...

The pharmacological profilaxis of perioperative seizures is not yet standardized: many protocols suggest the use of phenytoin (PHT), in oral administration at a mean dosage of 300 mg/ day (4-5 mg/Kg/day). This drug, for its peculiar kinetic (nonlinear pharmacokinetics, long and variable half-life, long time to reach the steady-state) is not, at lea...

We are employing PCV chemotherapy in a prospective phase II study on patients with anaplastic and low-grade astrocytomas recurrent after surgery and radiotherapy. Twenty patients (pts) with enhancing tumors on CT/MRI have been treated so far, 17 of which are evaluable for response. Results. Among patients with anaplastic astrocytomas at original su...

New technologies have been recently introduced into nerosurgery: laser sources, ultrasonic aspiration, intraoperative echotomography and intraoperative Doppler flowmeter. The aim of this work, showing the use of these instruments in different neurosurgical operations, is to discuss the effective improvements of the surgical techniques when comparin...

The surgical application of the laser in the treatment of vascular diseases of the brain is based on its characteristic to perform an immediate or delayed modification of the vessel wall either by shrinking the collagenous fibres or by intraluminal thrombosis. Personal researches have been carried out to study the histological modifications of the...

Five central nervous system (CNS) polymorphic angioblastic tumors have been studied. Four were located in the posterior fossa and one involved the temporal lobe. In reviewing the literature, the authors point out the rarity of the supratentorial locations and of malignant hemangioblastomas. The clinical and anatomopathological peculiarities are dis...

The function of elastic elements of the vessel wall is to produce a tension suitable to resist the distension strength made by blood pressure. By producing a modification in the morphologic and structural configuration of such elastic elements, it is possible to obtain changes of the elastic resistance of the wall. The paper reports the histologica...

A family with four members affected by solitary cerebellar hemangioblastomas is described. The analysis of pedigree supports the attribution of these cases to the von Hippel-Lindau complex. After discussing the clinical and histopathological details, the authors point out some diagnostic and prognostic problems.

A series of experiments has been carried out with the aim of determining the temperature distribution in nervous tissues after coagulation, vaporization and cutting, using electrosurgical unit (monopolar mode and bipolar mode) and laser beam (CO2, Argon and Nd:YAG). It was found that, at a surface distance of 2 mm from the heated point, the superfi...

Four cases with cranio-spinal giant cell tumours are reported. The extreme rarity of their locations and their clinical and pathological data are discussed. The evidence indicates that the prognosis varies from benign to malignant varieties; the latter found predominantly in the head.

Seven cases of cerebral tumors (four deep-seated sovratentorial gliomas located in motor area, occipital region, parietal region and frontal region; one deep-seated cystic cerebellar spongioblastoma; one sphenoidal wing meningioma, and one spinal cord intradural tumor) were simultaneously irradiated in the same area with two sources (CO2 and Nd:YAG...

The results of the operative treatment of brain tumors are considerably influenced by the surgical managements of the surrounding tissues. Edema, contusion, hemorragic soffusion,necrotic phenomena and impairements of C.S.F. circulation considerably influence the post-operative course especially in patients in whom the critical point of the rising o...

Controlled hypotension with nitroglycerin has been used n 30 neurosurgical procedures for aneurysms clipping, artero-veinous malformations, cerebral vascularised tumours and in some cases in the course of serial carotido-cerebral angiography. Farmacodynamic aspects of this drug and its effects on intracranial pressure are compared with sodium nitro...

While in ophthalmology and other branches of surgery (plastic surgery, gynaecology, otorhinolaryngology etc.), the laser has now become part of operative routine, in neurosurgery this has only recently become true and applies to very few medical centres. Thus, the operation by S. Stellar1, 2, 3 in 1969, for the removal of a cerebral glioma, remaine...

180 cases of cerebral palsy with spasticity have been surgically treated since 1971. Different surgical procedures were employed: Cryopulvinarectomy (22 cases), bilateral cryodentatolysis (48 cases), associated cryopulvinarectomy and bilateral cryodentatolysis (10 cases), Foerster’s posterior rhizotomy (14 cases), selective posterior rhizotomy (24...