Floating heart metastasis.

Renal-cell carcinoma accounts for 2 percent of all cancers and a third of the patients who undergo resection of localized disease will have a recurrence. We report a case of a 58-year-old man with a right atrial mass protruding into right ventricle arising from the inferior vena cava, found by echocardiography, which was subsequently proved to be a recurrence of renal-cell carcinoma 25 years after radical left nephrectomy. This pattern of late recurrence is rare and suggests that this tumor's aggressive nature contributed to the degree of heart invasion and the patient's rapid death.

Takayasu's arteritis: case report of a patient with recurrent subclavian steal syndrome.

Takayasu's arteritis is a chronic inflammatory disease of unknown origin in which cell-mediated inflammation involves large arteries progressing from the adventitia to the intima, until the lumen of the vessel is narrowed. Here we report a case of a 48-year-old female patient who was diagnosed with Takayasu's arteritis 6 years ago. At that time, because of severe involvement of both the right and left carotid arteries, she underwent application of a Hemashield vascular prosthesis, including the ascending aorta, left common carotid artery, and right common carotid artery.

[Lymphocyte apoptosis in non-ST segment elevation acute myocardial infarction ].

It is well known that lymphocytes play a major role in coronary plaque destabilization in acute coronary syndromes. The aim of this study was to evaluate circulating lymphocyte apoptosis in patients with non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) in comparison with subjects with stable angina and with healthy controls. We considered spontaneous lymphomonocyte apoptosis (evaluated by ELISA), interleukin (IL)-2 production (evaluated by ELISA), Fas expression on T cells (evaluated by flow cytometry) and Fas ligand mRNA (evaluated by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction), as well as Fas functionality.

Carvedilol: something else than a simple betablocker?

Carvedilol is a cardiovascular drug of multifaceted therapeutic potential, with beta-blocker and vasodilatative activity. These actions confer to the above mentioned betablocker some beneficial properties on several processes involving cardiovascular system. Carvedilol provides haemodynamic, antiischemic, antiproliferative and antiarrhytmic benefits, for its antioxidant neurohumoral and electrophysiological effects.