Survival and recurrence in patients with splanchnic vein thromboses.

Background & Aims: Hepatic, splenic, portal, and mesenteric veins are confluent elements within the splanchnic system. It is therefore unclear whether thromboses of isolated segments represent unique entities. We compared etiologies, recurrence, and survival of patients with thromboses of different splanchnic venous segments.

Predictors of failure of endovascular therapy for peripheral arterial disease.

The objective of this study was to assess the usefulness of a comparison of clinical failure and restenosis rates of endovascular procedures at 1 year in patients with peripheral arterial disease. The resulting comparison is presented as "clinical failure/restenosis coordinate." The authors screened 171 papers describing the outcome of lower extremity angioplasty or stent placement.

Brain natriuretic peptide levels and left ventricular functional recovery in a chronic heart failure population.

Due to the poor correlation between symptoms and left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction in a chronic heart failure (HF) population, the ability to identify patients who demonstrate LV functional recovery poses a dilemma for the clinician. Serial echocardiograms are not practical in a large outpatient HF population. Plasma brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels have a high predictive value for excluding patients with ventricular dysfunction and therefore could serve as a marker for identifying patients who demonstrate improved LV function.

Isolated tricuspid stenosis and heart failure: a focus on carcinoid heart disease.

A rare clinical occurrence, heart failure in the setting of tricuspid stenosis should immediately trigger a search for underlying systemic carcinoid disease. Carcinoid tumor cells can secrete a variety of vasoactive substances that result in skin erythema, excretory diarrhea, bronchospasm, and hemodynamic instability, but these manifestations are noted only in a few patients. Right heart valvular disease is common since the vasoactive noxious substances pass through the right heart unaffected and undergo metabolism in the pulmonary circulation, thereby decreasing involvement of the left-sided valves.