Otitic cerebellar abscess / by Heinrich Neumann ; translated by Richard Lake.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Otitic cerebellar abscess / by Heinrich Neumann ; translated by Richard Lake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    If we now proceed farther in the discussion of the statistics of my cases of cerebellar abscess due to chronic suppuration, we find sinus thrombosis in 38 cases (34 per cent.), in 16 cases (14-28 per cent.) extradural abscess of the posterior fossa without involvement of the sinus or the labyrinth, in 3 cases extradural abscess and sinus throm- bosis. In 26 cases extradural abscess and sinus thrombosis were produced by cholesteatoma, and 7 cases of extra- dural abscess, without labyrinthine suppuration and sinus thrombosis, were also due to cholesteatoma. II ./ETIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY The foregoing statistics have already shown that cerebellar as well as cerebral abscesses in general originate in 80 per cent, and more of the cases from chronic suppuration of the middle ear—that is to say, cases in which, as a rule, not the mucosa alone, but also the bone, is affected, or cholesteatomatous formation and absorption of bone has occurred. Acute processes in the middle ear exhibit only a slight tendency to involvement of the endocranium. This is due to the fact that acute otitis is but seldom accompanied by a noticeable destruction of the tissue of the mucosa of the middle ear, and the intact bony wall forms a protec- tion against the invasion of pathogenic germs. Only, in cases where the inflammation is of great intensity and the infecting agent especially virulent, thrombi are sometimes formed in the vessels of the mucous membrane of the tympanic cavity, which extend into the vessels of the bone,