Chagas’ disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi infection, was discovered nearly 100 years ago (1909) by the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas. Chronic Chagas’ disease is still ranked as the most serious parasitic disease in Latin America. Infected patients remain lifelong parasite carriers. With a latency of 10 to 30 years, nearly one third of parasite carriers develop life-threatening complicati...

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is characterized by irreversible airflow limitation in the lungs. COPD frequently coexist with Heart Failure (HF) but most patients go undiagnosed because of similarity symptoms. Data on prevalence HF are discrepant and scarce.

BACKGROUND Plasma B-type cardiac natriuretic peptides reflect cardiac structure and function and have proven roles in assisting in the diagnosis of acute heart failure. They are independent prognostic indicators across the full spectrum of cardiovascular disease. Serial changes in plasma B-type cardiac natriuretic peptides parallel prognosis in chronic heart failure. Beneficial responses to med...

Heart failure has a high prevalence in the general population. Morbidity and mortality of heart failure patients remain high, despite improvements in drug therapy, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and cardiac resynchronisation therapy. New transcatheter implantable devices have been developed to improve the treatment of heart failure. There has been a rapid development of minimally invas...

this study was undertaken to define the prevalence of the upper gastrointestinal (gi) lesions, dyspeptic symptoms, h.pylori infection, and the impact of duration of dialysis on upper gi symptoms and lesions of children with end-stage renal disease. we studied 69 children with esrd who were under regular hemodialysis therapy in our department. the age of the patients were between 4-18 years (mea...

Heart failure is a progressive syndrome marked by systemic and pulmonary venous congestion, and maladaptive neuroendocrine activation in the setting of structural heart disease. Another facet of this syndrome has recently emerged, involving metabolic dysregulation, which implicates adipose tissue, skeletal muscle and the endocrine systems (insulin, leptin, adiponectin) in interacting with the f...

Heart Failure Etiology The potential etiologies of ADHF are multifactorial. They can be broadly divided into two major categories: (1) the underlying etiology of the heart failure (the baseline cause of dysfunction), and (2) the etiology of the acute precipitant that resulted in worsening from the chronic compensated state. For some patients, particularly those presenting for the first time, th...