Child ego state is associated with high prevalence of repeated hospitalizations in patients with heart failure.

Aims: Inadequate self-care management is a leading cause of re-hospitalization in patients with heart failure (HF). Psychological factors such as some ego functions interfere with self-care behaviour modification, leading to poor outcomes in patients with several chronic diseases. However, characteristics of ego states in patients with repeated hospitalization for HF remain undefined.

Pinhole balloon rupture and stuck stent: case report of a new and simple bailout technique for incomplete stent dilatation caused by rupture from a highly calcified lesion.

We report a case of highly calcified 75% stenotic lesion in the proximal left anterior descending coronary artery. During stenting, the balloon incurred a pinhole rupture at the moment of dilatation and the stent expanded only at both ends. This caused the balloon and stent to become lodged in the coronary artery.

Moderate stenosis in left main trunk side branches treated with single sirolimus-eluting stents should be observed without additional stenting.

The sirolimus-eluting stent (SES) has dramatically reduced restenosis in patients with most types of coronary lesions, but bifurcation lesions remain a predictor of poor prognosis even in SES implantation. We aimed to determine the clinical outcomes of the left main trunk (LMT) side branches (SB) treated with a single SES strategy. SES implantation was successfully performed on 70 patients with LMT stenosis from August 2005 to August 2008.

Late progression after sirolimus-eluting stent implantation for de novo lesions--comparison with bare metal stent implantation.

Background: In previous studies, the minimal luminal diameter (MLD) of lesions treated with a bare metal stent (BMS) was shown to improve from 6 months to 3 years. However, the long-term response to a sirolimus-eluting stent (SES) implantation remains unclear.

Methods And Results: To evaluate 6-month, 12-month and 3-year outcomes, clinical and angiographic follow-up data were analyzed for 367 consecutive patients (506 de novo lesions) who underwent successful SES implantation compared to follow-up data for 617 consecutive patients (802 de novo lesions) who underwent BMS implantation.