Left Main Ostial Compression in a Patient with Pulmonary Hypertension: Dynamic Findings by IVUS.

Background: Pulmonary artery dilatation is a common feature among patients with severe pulmonary hypertension. Left main coronary artery extrinsic compression by an enlarged pulmonary artery is a rare complication and a potential cause for chest pain and sudden cardiac death in patients with pulmonary hypertension. This situation is very rare and few reports have described it.

Resolution of an acute aortic syndrome with aortic valve insufficiency post-PCI.

Background: Acute aortic syndrome is the modern term that includes aortic dissection, intramural hematoma, and symptomatic aortic ulcer. Iatrogenic coronary artery dissection extending to the aorta during percutaneous coronary intervention is a very rare but life-threatening complication. Despite some reports of spontaneous recovery, most of these patients are treated surgically as a spontaneous aortic dissection, especially if there is a complication of the aortic lesion.

Tissue doppler echocardiography in the diagnosis of heart transplantation rejection.

Background: Endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) is the gold standard method for the diagnosis of cellular rejection (CR) after heart transplantation (HT).

Objective: To test the hypothesis that tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) could detect CR > 3A and add diagnostic information compared to conventional Doppler.

Methods: Fifty-four HT patients underwent 129 EMB and a TDI echocardiographic study within 24 hours.

Multiple embolism in a female patient with infective endocarditis. Low back pain and hematuria as the initial clinical manifestations.

A 59-year-old female patient with mitral valve prolapse and a previous history of lumbosacral spondyloarthrosis and lumbar disk hernia had an episode of infective endocarditis due to Streptococcus viridans, which evolved with peripheral embolism to the left kidney, spleen, and left iliac artery, and intraventricular cerebral hemorrhage. Her clinical manifestations were low back pain and hematuria, which were initially attributed to an osteoarticular condition. Infective endocarditis is a severe polymorphic disease with multiple clinical manifestations and it should always be included in the differential diagnosis by clinicians.