Can cervical spine computed tomography assist in detecting occult pneumothoraces?
OPTXs were evident on thoracic (and not abdominal) CT in 17% of severely injured patients. For patients who also underwent C-spine imaging, all OPTXs isolated to thoracic CT could be diagnosed by using the pulmonary windows setting of their C-spine CT imaging protocol. All OPTXs, regardless of intra-thoracic location, could also be detected by combining C-spine and abdominal CT screening.
The effect induced by the N-acetylchitooses was a saturable phenomenon and did not interfere with free GlcNAc and trypsin which are two known activators of yeast chitin synthase activity in vitro. The magnitude of the activation was dependent on both oligosaccharide concentration and oligosaccharide size.