Patients' and cardiologists' perceptions of the benefits of percutaneous coronary intervention for stable coronary disease.

Background: It is unclear whether patients understand that percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) reduces only chronic stable angina and not myocardial infarction (MI) or associated mortality.

Objective: To compare cardiologists' and patients' beliefs about PCI.

Design: Survey.

Coarctation of distal thoracic aorta--the middle aortic syndrome in an elderly female with severe coronary artery disease.

Coarctation of the distal aorta or middle aortic syndrome is a segmental stenosis of the middle portion of the aorta, between the arch and the terminal bifurcation. Middle aortic syndrome is a rare disease of infants and young adults presenting with hypertension, lower limb claudication and renal insufficiency and is diagnosed by aortography or magnetic resonance angiography. Our case is unique because this condition was an incidental finding diagnosed during cardiac catheterization in a 70-year-old patient with hypertension in the absence of lower-limb claudication.

The hemodynamic signs of constrictive pericarditis can be mimicked by tricuspid regurgitation.

A case with clinical and hemodynamic findings consistent with constrictive pericarditis is reported. At surgery, the pericardium was not thickened or adherent to the epicardial wall. As suggested by echocardiography, a diagnosis of severe tricuspid regurgitation was confirmed.

Severe Aortic Coarctation in an Adult Without Left Ventricular Hypertrophy Nor Overt Collateral Channels.

We describe an unusual case of periductal carctation of the aorta in a 40-year-old patient presenting to the echocardiography laboratory for evaluation of a heart murmur. Subsequent clinical history revealed easy fatigability, dyspnea on exertion, and hypertension. Despite a lack of left ventricular hypertrophy, aortic coarctation was suggested by echocardiography.