Palliative Images in Marion Coutts's and Marco Peano's .

This article explores the representation of terminal brain cancer in Marion Coutts's memoir The Iceberg (2014), on her husband's illness and death, and Marco Peano's autofiction L'invenzione della madre (The invention of the mother; 2015), about a son who cares for his mother during her final days. While addressing the medicalization of dying and the efficacy of palliative care, both texts engage pervasively with visual culture. This emphasis on the visual arts and cinema provides a thought-provoking commentary on the protagonists' experience of witnessing the gradual erosion of verbal expression in their dying loved ones.

"Please keep on beating"-Participation in a Creative Workshop Offers Unexpected Benefits to Women With Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy.

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TCM) or "broken heart syndrome" is a rare condition that is more common in women than men, particularly those who are postmenopausal. It mimics a myocardial infarction and psychological factors have been implicated in its etiology as well as being consequences of its presentation. As part of a public engagement project we brought together 8 women (of 12 invited) previously diagnosed with TCM to facilitate a discussion, through participation in a creative workshop-based process, about their illness experience, how they made sense of it, and the meaning it had for them in their lives, and to identify areas of unmet need.

[Development of coronary artery disease in a young adult with Takayasu's arteritis: the lesser, the better].

Large vessel vasculitis, such as Takayasu's arteritis (TA), is a rare inflammatory disease affecting multiple vascular districts including the coronary arteries, producing either stenosis and/or aneurysms: these lesions can be found in the same patient and also in the same vessel, with potentially devastating effects. Moreover, TA often affects young people, in the midst of their work and social activity. Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of cardiovascular mortality in Western countries and is mainly due to coronary atherosclerosis, whose etiopathogenesis is multifactorial and is closely related to the concomitant presence of classic cardiovascular risk factors and inflammation of the vessel wall.

Authoring Pain: Fragmentation and Autofiction in Maggie Nelson's .

This article analyzes Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009) as a prominent example of the fragmentary narration that can result from the experience of pain and loss. I demonstrate how Nelson's disparate ruminations on her obsession for the color blue, her heartbreak, and her quadriplegic friend's chronic pain defy the superimposition of a teleological plot over these experiences, in favor of episodic reading and sporadic not-knowing. Still, the autofictional nature of the text-with its alternatively overbearing and elusive authorial presence-challenges any naïve emotional investment in it.

[Cardiac contractility modulation: a treatment option for patients with refractory heart failure].

Heart failure is the cardiovascular epidemic of the 21st century, with poor prognosis and quality of life despite optimized medical treatment. In the past two decades, only two new drugs have been added to therapeutic strategies for patients with symptomatic heart failure and even less progresses have been made on devices, with the implantable defibrillator indicated for patients with ejection fraction ≤35% and cardiac resynchronization therapy for those with QRS >130 ms and evidence of left bundle branch block. Nevertheless, only a third of patients meet these criteria and a high percentage of patients are non-responders in terms of improving symptoms.