Clinical and prognostic value of elevated CA125 levels in patients with congestive heart failure.

Background: Increased serum levels of carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125), a tumor marker associated with ovarian cancer, have also been reported in other malignant and non-malignant diseases. We assessed the correlation of the CA125 serum levels with the severity of congestive heart failure (CHF) and investigated their potential prognostic value in relation to major cardiovascular events.

Methods: CA125 levels were measured in 95 male patients aged 70+/-10 years, admitted for decompensated CHF.

Discordance between echocardiographic and MRI findings in two cases of acute myocarditis mimicking myocardial infarction.

Two male adolescents were admitted due to chest pain influenced by the respiratory movements. A lobar pneumonia caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae, was radiographically and serologically diagnosed in the first patient (a 15-year-old boy) and a febrile diarrhea of unidentified etiology, despite repetitive stool cultures and serological assessments in the second one (a 19-year-old male). Both patients combined the aforementioned infectious conditions with outstanding thoracic pain the previous hours before admission, markedly elevated cardiac enzymes and ST-segment elevation in the inferior and left precordial leads with a normal coronary angiogram, thus composing a clinical setting highly indicative of acute myocarditis.