Kimura's disease is a rare chronic inflammatory condition of unknown cause that most frequently affects Asian adults. It is characterized by painless lymphadenopathy in the head and neck region and eosinophilia, often associated with nephrotic syndrome. Α young Asian male presented to our Department with œdema at the lower limbs and scrotum, retroauricular masses, eosinophilia and proteinuria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn clinical practice lung ultrasound (LUS) is becoming an easy and reliable noninvasive tool for the evaluation of dyspnea. The aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of nurse-performed LUS, in particular, in the diagnosis of acute cardiogenic pulmonary congestion. We prospectively evaluated all the consecutive patients admitted for dyspnea in our Medicine Department between April and July 2014.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGiven the rare nature of Madelung's disease many clinicians will not have seen a patient with it and will not be able to recognise them: subsequently a diagnosis is unlikely to be made.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExperimental evidence indicates that endothelin 1 stimulates the sympathetic nervous system by activation of the subtype A receptor. The aim of the present study was to assess whether this mechanism is active in humans and to investigate its potential role in the pathogenesis of essential hypertension. In 15 hypertensive patients and 12 normotensive subjects, blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle sympathetic nerve activity were evaluated during intravenous 20-minute infusion of BQ123 (0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe described report deals with the case of a patient with diagnosis of ischemic-hypertensive cardiomyiopathy based on the history of angina and inducible myocardial ischemia with normal coronary arteries. However, after cardiac magnetic resonance, the typical amyloidotic pattern is found and the final diagnosis of multiple myeloma is made at osteomedullary biopsy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe evaluation of cardiac endocrine function by means of automated robust assays has permitted the introduction of a cheap and powerful clinical tool. Plasma concentration of B-type-related natriuretic peptides is a marker of either hemodynamic or neurohormonal stress on the heart and has been validated within the diagnostic and prognostic domain in patients with suspected or ascertained heart failure, mostly in the in-hospital setting. Evidence is growing, supporting an out-of-hospital use, namely in primary care.
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