OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome without overt cardiac disease have echocardiographic abnormalities and their relation with clinical and laboratory data. METHODS One hundred and seven consecutive patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome and 112 healthy controls, matched for age and gender, underwent complete echocardiographic study. RESULTS Thirty-two p...

In about 80% of the population, a small degree of tricuspid insufficiency occurs and therefore is considered almost physiological [1]. Higher mortality has been described among patients with moderate and severe tricuspid regurgitation compared to patients without it, irrespective of the pulmonary pressure value or systolic function of the left and right ventricle [2–4]. A fourfold increase in t...

We herein report two cases of proteinase 3-anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (PR3-ANCA)-related nephritis in infectious endocarditis. In both cases, the patients were middle-aged men with proteinuria and hematuria, hypoalbuminemia, decreased kidney function, anemia, elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, and PR3-ANCA positivity. Each had bacteremia, due to Enterococcus faecium in one and ...

A 65-year-old woman with a history of diabetes and a prior diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was admitted to the Department of Cardiology for palpitations. Cardiac examination revealed a 3/6 holosystolic murmur over the left parasternal area. Echocardiography showed that the aorta extended from the morphological systemic ventricle (RV), which was identified by the three-leaflet tricuspid...

T he prevalence of valve regurgitation in healthy people has been previously examined by echocardiography. Pulmonary regurgitation or tricuspid regurgitation (TR) was common, mitral regurgitation (MR) was less common, and aortic regurgitation was generally undetectable. In addition, the prevalence of regurgitant signals varies with age or sex. Assuming that a low prevalence of regurgitant signa...

BACKGROUND Tricuspid regurgitation in hypoplastic left heart syndrome has an impact on outcome, but its mechanisms remain unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS Real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography was performed in 35 patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (age, 1 month to 10 years; 10 after first-stage Norwood, 12 after superior cavopulmonary shunt, 13 after Fontan). From the 3-dimensional ...

OBJECTIVES Interventional treatment of tricuspid valve disease has so far received little attention due to the anatomical challenges in a thrombogenic surrounding. In the present study, we present an imaging-based, personalized interventional approach to the therapy of tricuspid regurgitation. METHODS In our porcine model, we used rapid prototyping to build a matrix reproducing the geometry o...

Moderate-to-severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR) affects ∼1.6 million patients in the USA, of whom only 8000 undergo tricuspid surgery annually; this results in an extremely large number of untreated patients with significant TR. Therefore, there is a large unmet clinical need for patients with severe TR who are not referred for conventional surgery, mainly due to expected high surgical risk. Pe...

An 18-year-old female with no past cardiovascular history was admitted to the emergency room due to dyspnoea, reduced exercise tolerance, and mild systolic murmur along the right sternal border. Bedside echocardiography documented a giant polypoid tumour filling the right ventricle (RV), protruding to the right atrium and occluding tricuspid valve in systole. No tricuspid regurgitation and valv...

The risks vs benefits of tricuspid valve (TV) surgery in reoperative patients requiring left-sided valve surgery and moderate-to-severe tricuspid regurgitation is unclear. We compared patients with and without concomitant TV surgery. A total of 200 patients with moderate-to-severe TV regurgitation had reoperative left-sided valve procedures from January 2002 to April 2014; 75 with TV interventi...