Atrial myxoma is the most common primary cardiac tumor. Its clinical presentation spreads from asymptomatic incidental mass to serious life-threatening cardiovascular complications. We report the case of a 44-year-old man with evening fever and worsening dyspnea in the last weeks, admitted to our hospital for acute pulmonary edema. The cardiac auscultation was very suspicious for mitral valve s...

An elderly female aspirated a donut and subsequently had loss of consciousness and cardiopulmonary arrest. Family members performed chest compressions until emergency medical services arrived and resuscitated the patient with an adequate heart rate and blood pressure. On hospital admission, the patient was nonresponsive on a mechanical ventilator. Cardiac auscultation revealed distant heart ton...

The early (approximately 30 min) postexercise hypotension response after a session of aerobic exercise is due in part to H1-receptor-mediated vasodilation. The purpose of this study was to determine the potential contribution of H2-receptor-mediated vasodilation to postexercise hypotension. We studied 10 healthy normotensive men and women (ages 23.7 +/- 3.4 yr) before and through 90 min after a...

Constrictive pericarditis is a rare disease, usually the result of long-standing pericardial inflammation leading to pericardial scarring with thickening, fibrosis, and calcification. The most frequent causes are mediastinal radiation, chronic idiopathic pericarditis, cardiac surgery, and tuberculous pericarditis. Nearly 9% of patients with acute pericarditis for any reason go on to develop con...

conclusions diagnosis of tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy in children is important, since appropriate treatment improves the prognosis. every child with recurrent and persistent palpitation with the first episode of congestive heart failure should be evaluated for tachycardia- induced cardiomyopathy. introduction tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy (tic) is a ventricular dysfunction secondary ...

We determined the prevalence of mitral valve prolapse (MVP) in presumably healthy young men by studying 107 male house officers and medical students with cardiac auscultation in the supine, sitting and standing positions. Echocardiograms were performed at rest in the supine position before and after amyl nitrite inhalation and were obtainable in 101 subjects. Eleven of the 101 subjects had abno...

Twenty three patients with fragile X syndrome underwent cardiovascular assessment. Echocardiography showed dilatation of the aortic root in 12 (52%) and mitral valve prolapse in five (22%), four of whom had an apical mid-systolic click on auscultation. Patients with fragile X syndrome have cardiac defects similar to those seen in other disorders of connective tissue such as Marfan's syndrome an...