Biomedical subjects
I Robb
Publications and source records attributed to I Robb.
The surface area of the intestinal mucosa in the lactating rat.
1. The mucosal and serosal surface dimensions of the rat duodenum, jejunum and ileum were obtained by measurement of photographs of histological sections. The surface areas were calculated from these data.2. Measurements were made on the intestines from virgin rats and from rats on the sixteenth day of lactation. The mucosal area/unit length of serosa was appreciably increased in all parts of the intestine during lactation. The mucosal area/serosal area (MA/SA) ratio was also markedly increased, but to a lesser extent distally, where an important component of the intestinal hypertrophy was dilatation of the intestine.
Role of electron microscopy in head and neck pathology in adults and children.
Diagnostic electron microscopic studies specific to the head and neck region are limited in both children and adults. Even information about the workload created by specimen acquisition from this region in the electron microscopy laboratory is lacking. To address these deficiencies, various specimens gathered from adults (N = 6607) and children (N = 1556), over a 5- and 10-year period, respectively, and blocked in plastic resin were surveyed. Head and neck samples accounted for 16.4% of these samples from adults and 13.5% from children, representing sizable contributions to workload from an anatomic region amounting to less than 10% of body mass. In adults, diagnostic problems posed by metastatic neoplasms account for a considerable proportion of the cases submitted for electron microscopy; in the pediatric age group, undifferentiated primary tumors of the head and neck region frequently require ultrastructural study. In both circumstances, spindle cell, look-alike, neuroendocrine, and small cell tumors can frequently be rapidly assessed and differentiated by ultrastructural details. Problem cases are inevitable given the complexity of this region and the number of different tissues and organs in close proximity. It is advantageous to anticipate the possibility of encountering difficult differential diagnostic problems by sampling lesions of the head and neck for glutaraldehyde fixation more frequently.