Pulmonary valve spindle-cell lipoma: A case report.

Primary cardiac tumours are rare and most of them are benign. Myxomas, fibroelastomas and lipomas are common in adults. Primary valvular cardiac tumours are even more rare and affect all four valves in a similar proportion.

Constrictive pericarditis heart failure in a patient with atrial fibrillation: A diagnostic challenge.

Constrictive pericarditis is an infrequent cause of heart failure. Diagnosis is challenging and requires a high level of suspicion. Subtle echocardiographic findings, as the pericardial bounce, could be the clue to diagnosis.

Practical Echocardiographic Approach of the Regurgitant Mitral Valve Assessment.

Mitral regurgitation is the second-most frequent valvular heart disease in Europe after degenerative aortic stenosis. It is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, and its prevalence is expected to increase with population aging. Echocardiography is the first diagnostic approach to assess its severity, constituting a challenging process in which a multimodality evaluation, integrating quantitative, semiquantitative and qualitative methods, as well as a detailed evaluation of the morphology and function of both left ventricle and atria is the key.

Ultrasound Assessment in Cardiogenic Shock Weaning: A Review of the State of the Art.

Cardiogenic shock (CS) is associated with a high in-hospital mortality despite the achieved advances in diagnosis and management. Invasive mechanical ventilation and circulatory support constitute the highest step in cardiogenic shock therapy. Once established, taking the decision of weaning from such support is challenging.

Compression of the right coronary artery by an aortic pseudoaneurysm after infective endocarditis: an unusual case of myocardial ischemia.

A 61-year-old male with a prosthetic St Jude aortic valve size 24 presented with heart failure symptoms and minimal-effort angina. Eleven months earlier, the patient had undergone cardiac surgery because of an aortic root dilatation and bicuspid aortic valve with severe regurgitation secondary to infectious endocarditis by and coronary artery disease in the left circumflex coronary artery. Then, a prosthesis valve and a saphenous bypass graft to the left circumflex coronary artery were placed.

Levosimendan improves hemodynamic status in critically ill patients with severe aortic stenosis and left ventricular dysfunction: an interventional study.

Aims: To study the hemodynamic effect of levosimendan administration in acute heart failure patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF).

Methods: Hemodynamic response to 24 h intravenous levosimendan infusion (0.1 μg/kg/min without a loading dose) in patients with severe AS (aortic valve area ≤1 cm(2) , time-velocity integral between left ventricular out-flow tract and aortic valve <0.

Pulmonary valve infective endocarditis in an adult patient with severe congenital pulmonary stenosis and ostium secundum atrial septal defect.

A hypertensive 76-year-old man with severe pulmonary valve stenosis (PVS) and recent initiation of haemodialysis was referred with fever, chills, and asthenia. One month prior, he had been admitted with similar symptoms. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) had shown a PVS and no valve vegetations were observed.