Sinuses Problems

It suprised me, when I started working in CT, how many people have sinus problems. It seens to a common thing and a lot of people have surgery to help with their problems. Sinus problems can cause infections, severe headaches, pressure in the head, and more. Some cases I have seen the patient actually gets severe vertigo from sinus problems. We perform sinus CT on all different ages. Sometimes antiobotics dont even help. If one has sinusitis and they do not have it treated it can lead to chronic sinusitis and severe infections. The way doctors help with sinus problems vary. One of the most common surgeries is nasal irrigation. It is a very common problems here and hopefully one day they will have a better solution.

Orbits and Grave's Disease

One disease that I find interesting is grave's disease. I figured this was a wonderful oppurtunity to talk about graves when learning about the orbits. The orbits help diagnose graves disease by determining changes in the optic nerve and orbital shape. In graves disease the orbits can be decompressed, which requires surgery and problems with vision. Other symptoms include: decreased ocular motility, exposure keratitis, optic neuropathy, and poor cosmesis per emedicine.medscape.com. Graves disease goes way back and was orginally called Graves- Basedow disease. In 1835 they described graves disease as hyperthyroidism, goiter and exophthalmos per emedicine.com In graves disease the thyroid gland becomes enlarged and is called a goiter. Picture by: http://spinwarp.ucsd.edu/neuroweb/Text/orb-220.htm

Pituitary Gland

I am writing about pituitary tumors this week. I find it very interesting that something so small can get tumors and can affect so much. In an article I read that 75% of pituitary tumors release hormones, which is a lot. If they release too much hormones thatn several things can happen such as:giantism, hypothyroidism, cushing syndromes, etc. Hypopituitarism is caused when the hormone secreting cells of the pituitary are damaged sue to the growth of the tumor. I received most of my information from the website: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000704.htm

http://www.ghorayeb.com/PituitaryMRI.html

IAC/ temporal bones

Wow the ear was a lot more complicated, as far as anatomy goes, than I expected.

I believe the part if the ear that I find most interesting is the 3 small bones, malleus, incus and stapes. They are so tiny and help the ear with sounds and protecting the inner parts. They help with sound by vibrating noises off eachother. They also have nicknames. They are also known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup.

They also do implants of the middle ear with these three tiny bones. I was doing a ct with a man that had the implants done. He was able to hear fine and had no complications.

Here is a picture of the three small bones I find so interesting: