Otogenic brain abscess and concomitant acute COVID 19 infection - case report and review of the literature.

Background: COVID-19 has attracted global attention primarily because of the severe acute respiratory symptoms associated with it. However, nearly one third of the patients also present with neurologic symptoms. This report describes a case of a previously healthy woman with acute COVID-19 infection, who developed acute facial nerve palsy and rapid progression to coma due to otogenic brain abscess.

[Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and hemodynamics : Therapy is not only a friend of the heart].

Extracorporeal support systems for the heart and lungs are employed for cardiac, pulmonary and also cardiopulmonary failure; however, neither the pure lung support by venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (vvECMO) nor the venoarterial (va) ECMO behave in a hemodynamically inert manner with respect to the patient's own cardiovascular system. The success of ECMO treatment is decisively dependent on monitoring before and during the execution and the pathophysiological understanding of the hemodynamic changes that occur during treatment. This article explicitly elucidates these "concomitant phenomena" and discusses fundamental aspects of cardiovascular physiology and the specific interplay with ECMO treatment.

[Which biomarkers for diagnosis and guidance of anti-infection treatment in sepsis?].

To date no biomarker has been identified bringing together perfect sensitivity and specificity to discriminate between inflammation and infections. Since the 1930s new markers of tissue damage and endothelial damage have been identified but which are incapable of identifying infections in every clinical setting to enable initiation of early antibiotic treatment. In this review the most important classical biomarkers and upcoming new PCR-based approaches are addressed.

Heritability of left ventricular and papillary muscle heart size: a twin study with cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.

Aims: Earlier studies in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins showed genetic variance on echocardiographically determined heart size. However, cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is more precise and reproducible. We performed a twin study relying on CMR, focusing on left ventricular (LV) mass and papillary muscle, since there are no genetic reports on this structure.