A novel case of transient right ventricular failure in a patient with respiratory distress.

Right ventricular (RV) failure is characterized by an inability to pump blood into the pulmonary circulation and can often lead to hemodynamic instability. Common causes of RV failure include left ventricular (LV) failure, RV infarction, sepsis, cor pulmonale due to acute respiratory distress syndrome, pulmonary emboli, or pulmonary hypertension. We report the case of a 61-year-old woman with no significant pulmonary or cardiac disease who presented with hypoxic respiratory failure in the setting of opioid overdose.

Critical evaluation of radiolabeled lymphocytes to detect acute renal transplant rejection in a large animal model.

Background: Renal transplant rejection cannot be diagnosed with certainty by non-invasive techniques. These techniques lack the specificity to differentiate rejection from other causes of renal dysfunction such as ATN and calcineuria toxicity. Since rejection involves lymphocytes, which the other courses of dysfunction do not, radiolabeling lymphocytes is an attractive technique to diagnose rejection non-invasively.