No abstract

Acute esophageal necrosis, commonly referred to as “black esophagus” or “acute necrotizing esophagitis”, is a rare clinical disorder with an unclear etiology. The definition excludes patients with a history of recent caustic ingestion. Oesophageal necrosis can be diagnosed at endoscopy by the presence of black necroting appearing oesophagus. Contrary to the caustic oesophagitis whose treatment is often surgical, treatment of the acute necrositing oesophagitis is primarily medical. The prognosis for patients who develop acute necrotizing oesophagitis is generally poor. We report a new case of acute necrotizing oesophagitis and undertook a literature review of this rare diagnosis.

Amiodarone chlorhydrate is a diiodated benzofuran derivative used to treat cardiac rhythm abnormalities�� Hepatotoxicity is a relatively uncommon side effect of amiodarone and symptomatic hepatic dysfunction occurs in less than 1% to 3% of patients taking amiodarone�� We report here on an unusual case of amiodarone-induced hepatotoxicity�� A 29 year old woman with normal liver function was given amiodarone intravenously to treat her atrial fibrillation. She developed acute toxic hepatitis after 24 h�� The intravenous form of amiodarone was immediately avoided and replaced by the oral form, using conventional loading doses as soon as the deranged liver function tests had normalized, without recurrence of the hepatitis�� These observations show that the occurrence of acute hepatic impairment with intravenous amiodarone does not necessarily preclude the use of this drug by mouth and the necessity of monitoring the hepatic function of patients treated with amiodarone��

No abstract

IntroductionEndoscopic variceal ligation is widely accepted as the optimum endoscopic treatment for esophageal variceal hemorrhage. In Morocco, there are no data regarding the efficacy of this technique. Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of endoscopic variceal ligation in the management of oesophageal variceal bleeding in cirrhosis in a located population in Morocco.MethodsVia a retrospective study over 118 months (December 2001- October 2011), cirrhotic patients with endoscopically proven esophageal variceal hemorrhage were treated by endoscopic variceal ligation. We studied the rate of haemostasis, rebleeding, complications and mortality.Results360 cirrhotic patients were included and 378 haemostatic variceal ligations were performed. Primary haemostasis was obtained in 96.5 % (N=365) of cases. Thirty three patients (8.7%) bled during follow-up. The rate of minor complications was 15.3 % (N=58). Retrosternal pain, fever, dysphagia and Overtube's migration developed in 8.4 % (N=32); 2.6 % (N=10); 3,7 % (N=14) and 0.5 % (N=2) of the patients respectively. Severity of these complications was mild and transient. The rate of oesophageal ulcers was 5 % (N=19), while the mortality rate by haemorrhage was 5 % (N=18).ConclusionOur data showed that band ligation is an effective and safe treatment modality of esophageal variceal bleeding with low rates of rebleeding and complications.