[Clinical morphological characteristics of a heart lesion in drug allergy].

Observation of 40 patients with drug myocarditis developing in the presence of acute manifestations of drug allergy, and morphological examination of the myocardium of 15 patients who had died of different manifestations of allergy and drug myocarditis show that drug myocarditis develops quite often in acute manifestations of allergy. This is confirmed by the clinical symptoms, the electrocardiographic findings and the results of immunological study with the use of the leukocyte migration inhibition test with the cardiac antigen. In contrast to persons of the control groups, patients with drug myocarditis showed positive results beginning with the 4th-5th day of the development of the pathological process in the myocardium.

[Change in the index of neutrophil damage in infectious allergic myocarditis and its sequelae].

The reaction of damage to the blood neutrophils (the IND test) by a soluble cardiac antigen was studied in 10 healthy individuals, in 15 persons with infectious-allergic myocarditis and in 13 persons with myocarditic cardiosclerosis. Autoallergic shifts in relation to the cardiac antigen were revealed in half of the patients with infectious-allergic myocarditis and in one third of persons with myocarditic cardiosclerosis. The shifts were more marked in patients with infectious-allergic myocarditis.

[Difficulties in diagnosis of infectious-allergic myocarditis].

The work is based on observations over 168 patients with infectious-allergic myocarditis. The principal clinical, instrumental-laboratory, and morphologic criteria of this disease are discussed. The contractile function of the myocardium and central hemodynamics were studied.

[Classification of non-coronarogenic myocardial damage].

A working classification of noncoronarogenic damage to the cardiac muscle is suggested in which 4 general-pathology groups are considered: myocardial dystrophies, myocarditis, cardiomyopathy, and neoplasms. The main principles are presented for grouping diseases of the myocardium not associated with ischemic heart disease, hypertension or rheumatic fever. Certain problems of the clinical picture and differential diagnosis of dystrophic, inflammatory, and idiopathic damages to the heart muscle are discussed.

[Myocardial damage syndrome in allergic conditions].

Experimental and clinical studies were conducted that permitted to suggest a possible direct damaging effect of allergy upon the myocardium. Distinct types of allergic reactions of the myocardium were singled out in cases of the states being studied, namely infectious-allergic myocarditis and bronchial asthma. The reactions observed in infectious-allergic myocarditis pertain to hypersensitivity of a delayed type which morphological manifestation is embodied in cellular lymphohistocytic, monocytic perivascular infiltration and myocardial stroma damage.