A prospective study on the effects of bilateral anterior capsulotomy in patients with refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is presented. A total of 18 procedures were performed in 15 patients. The mean duration of the OCDs was 18.1 ± 5.6 years (range 11–26 years). The mean total Yale-Brown Scale (Y-BOCS) score was 29.67 and mean Global Assessment of Functioning was 43.61. The results throughout the follow-up period remained the same as at 1 month postoperatively. The observed mean recovery on the Y-BOCS was 33.2% (p = 0.017). 52.9% of the patients showed a 33% recovery, 29.4% of the cases showed a 50% recovery and 17% showed a 66% recovery. Global Assessment of Functioning recovered by 19% (p = 0.111). No cognitive deficit was disclosed by neuropsychological screening tests. Complications were observed in 3 cases, 1 with transitory hallucinations, 1 with a single epileptic seizure and 1 case who developed a progressive behavior disorder that became permanent. We conclude that bilateral anterior capsulotomy is a safe and effective procedure.

Pattern recognition techniques (factor analysis and neural networks) were used to investigate and classify human brain tumors based on the 1H NMR spectra of chemically extracted biopsies (n = 118). After removing information from lactate (because of variable ischemia times), unsupervised learning suggested that the spectra separated naturally into two groups: meningiomas and other tumors. Principal component analysis reduced the dimensionality of the data. A back-propagation neural network using the first 30 principal components gave 85% correct classification of meningiomas and nonmeningiomas. Simplification by vector rotation gave vectors that could be assigned to various metabolites, making it possible to use or to reject their information for neural network classification. Using scores calculated from the four rotated vectors due to creatine and glutamine gave the best classification into meningiomas and nonmeningiomas (89% correct). Classification of gliomas (n = 47) gave 62% correct within one grade. Only inositol showed a significant correlation with glioma grade.

We describe a 72-year-old woman with chronic asthma who presented with cerebral abscesses due to Aspergillus fumigatus after she received treatment with corticosteroids. Therapy with high-dose itraconazole (800 mg/d for 5 months, followed by 400 mg/d for an additional 4.5 months) resulted in complete resolution of all lesions. Serum concentrations of the drug ranged from 2 micrograms/mL to 30 micrograms/mL. Review of 20 cases of cerebral aspergillosis that were treated with itraconazole revealed that three of the four patients who received high doses (800 mg/d in the adults) of the drug responded favorably, while only two of the 16 patients who received a dose of 400 mg/d were cured. The use of high-dose itraconazole appears to be justified for high-risk patients with cerebral aspergillosis for whom conventional therapy has failed.