[ST segment elevation in anterior precordial leads and right ventricular infarction. Apropos of 6 cases].

ST segment elevation in the anterior precordial chest leads may be observed in some cases of right ventricular infarction alone or associated with left ventricular inferior wall infarction. Six out of 700 patients admitted to our Coronary Care Unit over a 2 year period had right ventricular infarction with these electrocardiographic changes. In three cases, isolated right ventricular infarction was due to occlusion of a right marginal artery (N = 2) or of a small right coronary artery (N = 1) which only vascularised the right ventricle.

[Right-left shunt caused by sarcoma of the right atrium].

A 70 year old woman was admitted for right ventricular failure and cyanosis of recent onset. Echocardiography showed a very large, homogenous, immobile, smooth-contoured mass filling the right atrium. Right atrial pressures were raised but the other intracardiac pressures were normal at catheterisation.

[Cardiac involvement in malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphoma].

Selective cardiac involvement by a malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (primary lymphoma of the heart) is extremely rare. Cardiac lesions occurring in the course of a malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (secondary lymphoma of the heart) are found at autopsy in about 10 per cent of the cases. Secondary lymphoma of the heart may involve all cardiac structures, but lesions of the right heart, and particularly the right atrium, are predominant.

[Transient reduction of ventricular tachycardia with adenosine-5'-triphosphate. A possible action of ATP on purinergic receptors].

The authors report the case of a 46 year old man in whom a regular, wide complex tachycardia was terminated temporarily by the injection of adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP:Striadyne); endocavitary electrophysiological studies showed the tachycardia to be of ventricular origin. After aminophylline, an inhibitor of certain purinergic receptors, the tachycardia could be reproduced at will and was sustained whereas only short runs of tachycardia could be induced under basal conditions. The mode of action of the ATP on this type of tachycardia could be a direct effect of the molecule on the purinergic receptors specifically inhibited by aminophylline.

Post-radiotherapeutic left main coronary ostial stenosis: clinical and histological study.

Pericardial abnormalities remain the most common manifestation of radiation-induced cardiac disease, but coronary artery lesions are not rare. In this report we describe a left coronary ostial stenosis which appeared five years after mediastinal irradiation for breast carcinoma in a 50-year-old woman. The patient underwent coronary angiography.