Cardiology Journal 2010, tom 17, nr 4

Recent advances in noninvasive cardiac imaginghave opened new opportunities for detecting clinically silent coronary artery disease (CAD). Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is an excellent example. Many authors stress its high negative predictive value, making this noninvasive method especially valuable for excluding significant coronary lesions in very high-risk asymptomatic persons and in symptomatic subjects with a low or moderate CAD probability [1]...

Brugada syndrome (BS) is a chanelopathy, with no apparent heart disease, ‘coved’ or ‘saddle-back’ type ST-segment elevation in the right precordial leads of electrocardiogram (ECG) and propensity for life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias. Recently, a variant (atypical) type of BS has been reported, with downsloping ST-segment elevation in the inferior leads, sometimes associated with myocardial infarct, cocaine abuse, mediastinal tumor, hyperkalemia or hypothermia...

We present the case of a young patient with severe congenital musculoskeletal abnormalities.Associated with different pathologies, with involvement of the arterial tree on both the systemic and pulmonary circulation, and involvement of the lungs due to thoracic hypoplasia...

A 25 year-old female with a history of Caesarian section ten weeks ago presented with symptoms suggestive of pulmonary embolism. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed a free- -floating large thrombus traversing the right atrial cavity...

Decreased left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF) is a predictor of poor late outcome in patients with mitral regurgitation (MR). The relationship between pre-operative forward stroke volume (SV) and right heart parameters and perioperative outcome in patients with MR has been little studied...

Lithium overdoses causing cardiotoxicity are uncommon and electrocardiographic changes suggesting myocardial ischemia are rare. However, some authors have specifically reported the occurrence of ischemic electrocardiography changes due to a lithium overdose...

Intra-aortic balloon pumps (IABP) are commonly used in the setting of an acute myocardial infarction that is complicated by cardiogenic shock or mechanical complications such as a ventricular septal defect or papillary muscle rupture. IABP has also been shown to be useful in patients with refractory and hemodynamically unstable ventricular arrhythmias and refractory post-myocardial infarction angina...

We sought to explore whether the simplified Selvester QRS scoring system could predict ST segment resolution in patients with first acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction who receive pharmacological reperfusion therapy...

Papillary muscle rupture is an infrequent but often fatal mechanical complication of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). We report the case of an AMI complicated by the development of an abrupt cardiogenic shock due to the rupture of the head of the postero-medial papillary muscle with echocardiographic demonstration of severe mitral regurgitation due to flail posterior mitral valve leaflet...

This study addresses the safety, feasibility, and interpretability of coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) in excluding significant coronary artery disease in end-stage renal disease patients on dialysis undergoing pre-renal transplant cardiac risk evaluation...