Ventilator-associated pneumonia is a severe complication among patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Although hospital-acquired bacterial pathogens, often multidrug resistant, are the most frequent cause, non-bacterial atypical and opportunistic agents traditionally associated with immunocompromise are increasingly recognized. We describe ventilator-associated pneumonia due to Pneumocystis jirov...

Multiple aorto-cardiac cavity communications is very rare but important complication of prosthetic aortic valve endocarditis. The case below illustrates multiple aorto-cardiac cavity fistula formation following prostethic aortic valve endocarditis presented with slowly progressive symptoms of heart failure. A brief review of surgical reconstruction and the existing literature are presented, inc...

Background Cardiac stress MRI has grown to a well established method to detect hypokinesia or perfusion deficits due to ischemia. Commonly, myocardial load is generated by the administration of adenosine or dobutamine, which is associated by a higher complication rate compared to exercise stress testing. Our purpose was to evaluate the use of an MR conditional pedal ergometer for cardiac stress...

Cardiac tuberculosis is rare and usually involves the pericardium. Myocardial tuberculoma is a very rare occurrence and only a few cases were reported. We describe the use of cardiovascular magnetic resonance in the diagnosis of a rare case of cardiac tuberculoma involving the right atrium which was complicated by a bicaval obstruction. The patient made a remarkable improvement with the anti-tu...

central venous catheter (cvc) insertion is a practical way to assess patients hemodynamic specially in cardiovascular surgery but this relatively simple junior level procedure is not risk free and its common reported complications include; pneumothorax, hydrothorax, hemothorax, local hematoma, cardiac tamponade, vascular injury, thrombosis, embolism, and catheter disruption. here in this articl...

Tapia's syndrome is a rare complication following cardiac surgery. It includes the extracranial involvement of the recurrent laryngeal nerve and the hypoglossal nerve and results in ipsilateral paralysis of the vocal cord and the tongue. It is usually a complication related to anaesthesia and positioning of the head of the patient during surgery. We describe this rare complication which occurre...

(A) Chest X-ray after pacemaker implantation (A). (B) Four days later, chest X-ray showed the displacement of the leads into the right atrium and the superior vena cava, with both the leads being wrapped around the pacemaker generator. (C) A few months later, a repeat chest X-ray showed a similar displacement of both the leads. A 67-year-old woman who underwent pacemaker implantation 4 days ago...