There appears to be a narrow transition zone for hepatic vessels at 2-4 mm, beyond which the heat sink effect was seen consistently and substantial vascular injury was rare.

Nonfocused helical CT was highly accurate in diagnosing acute appendicitis or suggesting an alternative diagnosis in patients with acute lower abdominal pain or right lower quadrant pain.

Intraperitoneal saline infusion may reduce the frequency and severity of diaphragmatic injury when adjacent liver is treated with RF ablation.

Sonography led to underestimations of the true size of ablated lesions within the first 5 min after creation; however, delayed images provided better results. The avascular lesion measured on contrast-enhanced helical CT closely correlated with the size of ablated tissue; therefore, contrast-enhanced CT is preferred for serially monitoring the effect of radiofrequency ablation.

We review the anesthetic implications of Joubert syndrome and report that spinal anesthesia under intravenous propofol sedation proved satisfactory for repair of an inguinal hernia in a spontaneously ventilating infant with this syndrome. We caution that anatomical peculiarities may complicate performance of a caudal epidural block and suggest consideration of the use of caffeine to ameliorate the apneic episodes seen in early infancy in this syndrome.