Books in review

She has written widely on sociological and cultural aspects of psychoanalysis. Her most recent book, Feminists and Freudians: A Comparative Perspective,has just been published in German and is forthcoming in English.     

Klebsiella meningitis mimicking clinical deterioration from hemorrhage of a complex posterior fossa arteriovenous malformation

We report a case of a 33-year-old male with a history of complex posterior fossa arteriovenous malformation (AVM) with partial resection done in China; at follow-up in our unit, he presented with a 1-day history of acute deterioration of consciousness level after minor head injury. The clinical and radiologic features were compatible with spontaneous hemorrhage from the AVM, and the patient died 1 day after admission. However, postmortem examination revealed the direct cause of death was due to Klebsiella meningitis. The clinical catch is highlighted, and the importance of early and prompt detection of this condition is emphasized.     

Survived crossbow injuries

The Hamburg University Institute of Legal Medicine presents 2 cases of injuries of crossbow arrows where the patients survived. Crossbows are used nowadays as sports and hunting weapons. They are freely obtainable, and since people without practice can shoot them, there are constant injuries and fatal cases. Crossbow arrows have a high penetration force and can even pierce bone. Depending on the tip of the arrow used, they bore or cut through tissue, here damage to the tissue being restricted to the direct surroundings. Due to the elasticity of the tissue, the arrow shaft in the wound track may have the effect of an incomplete tamponade so that major hemorrhaging is prevented. In this condition, the injured person may be conscious and capacitated. From the medical viewpoint, crossbow arrows should therefore be invariably left in the wound, secured against displacement during transport, and only removed in the hospital.     

26-Locus Y-STR typing in a Bhutanese population sample

26 Y chromosome short tandem repeat (STR) loci were amplified in a sample of 856 unrelated males from Bhutan, using two multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays. The first multiplex is the Y-STR 20plex described by Butler et al. [J.M. Butler, R. Schoske, P.M. Vallone, M.C. Kline, A.J. Redd, M.F. Hammer, A novel multiplex for simultaneous amplification of 20 Y chromosome STR markers, Forensic Sci. Int. 129 (2002) 10-24], and the second is a novel (but overlapping) 14plex that targets six additional Y-STRs (DYS425, DYS434, DYS435, DYS436, DYS461, DYS462) and also amplifies the amelogenin locus. The 26-loci give a discriminating power of 0.9957, though even at this resolution one haplotype occurs 24 times. We identify novel alleles at five loci and microvariants at a further three, which were characterised by sequencing. Extended (11-locus) haplotypes for these samples have been submitted to the Y-STR Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD).