Retroperitoneal fibrosis is best described as a chronic inflammatory process which may be idiopathic, but can rarely be brought about by medications, such as pergolide, used for treating Parkinson's disease. Pergolide can produce a fibrotic process in heart valves, resulting in valve insufficiency in up to 25% of cases. Herein we describe the case of a 68-year-old man who received pergolide for...

Clinical studies of a family of Saluki dogs demonstrated a spectrum of cardiac malformations, which ranged from mild thickening of a pulmonic valve leaflet to a complex condition composed of tricuspid valve insufficiency, pulmonic stenosis, patent ductus arteriosus, and mitral valve insufficiency. All affected dogs had patent ductus arteriosus or ductus diverticulum, which is an incomplete or a...

Followup of 29 patients with a Beau mitral valve prosthesii has shown important advantages over the KayShiiey valve. No late deaths and no emboli were noted during an average 14 month (range 8 to 27 months) follewup. Mitral insufficiency was not noted clinically or by angiography. Hernodynamic studies in nine patients 16 months postoperation showed improvement. Although all patients had evidenc...

OBJECTIVE The advantages and disadvantages of minimally invasive Port Access mitral valve operation have not been defined relative to standard median sternotomy. A study was therefore designed to delineate differences in outcome from mitral operation via Port Access versus sternotomy in comparable patients. METHODS The records of 41 consecutive patients undergoing isolated mitral valve replac...

We present the case of a 42-year-old man with mitral valve prolapse (MVP) and infective endocarditis. He was referred to our hospital by his family physician for the evaluation of a cardiac murmur. A detailed medical history revealed that he had been feeling fatigue with occasional episodes of slight fever during the last two months. Echocardiography revealed MVP with a sizeable vegetation and ...

Introduction Excess dilatation of the left atrium >65 mm is known in the literature as gigantic atrium. This dilation is most commonly encountered in the mitral insufficiency of rheumatic etiology, but also in severe prolapses of the mitral valve, permanent atrial fibrillation, and at the left right shunt with cardiac insufficiency. Case report In this paper is presented a case study of echoc...

Gaucher's disease is an autosomal recessive storage disorder. We report two siblings with Gaucher's disease, both of which had mitral valve prolapse and mitral insufficiency. One of the siblings died of bacterial endocarditis and pneumonia, while the other continues under followup.

A 2-month-old girl presenting with heart failure and murmur was investigated using Doppler echocardiography and cardiac catheterization revealing an anomalous left coronary artery origin from the pulmonary trunk and massive mitral regurgitation. The patient was submitted to surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass: the anomalous coronary artery was implanted in the aorta and the mitral valve repair...

Force development and shortening by cardiac muscle occur as a result of the interaction between actin and myosin within the myofibrillar lattice. This interaction is dependent upon intracellular ionized calcium and is controlled by the troponin-tropomyosin regulatory proteins situated along the actin filament. In this study, we compared the myofibrillar content and myofibrillar Mg-ATPase activi...