[Limits of intensive care medicine. Medical and legal aspects].

Modern intensive care can extend life. However, it may also extend the dying period. Because of this fact, doctors have been publicly accused of extending dying beyond human dignity, rather than accepting the end of life.

[Single or multiple balloon inflations in coronary angioplasty? Acute results and long-term angiography results of a prospective, randomized study of 300 patients].

325 coronary lesions in 300 consecutive patients (257 male, 43 female, 52 +/- 8 years) undergoing either single-vessel (n = 275) or double-vessel PTCA in two independent procedures (n = 25) were prospectively randomized to either one (group A, n = 167) or three (group B, n = 168) balloon inflations. By clinical and angiographic criteria, PTCA was successful in 295/325 lesions (90.8%) with no significant difference for group A (88.

[Electrocardiographic diagnosis of acute graft rejection after heart transplantation].

In order to evaluate the diagnostic value of standard-ECG (ST-ECG) and precordial mapping-ECG with 63 unipolar leads (PM-ECG) for detection of acute cardiac allograft rejection, 15 patients (12 male, 3 female; age range 24-64 years) were studied. ST-ECG and PM-ECG were recorded along with 94 endomyocardial biopsies. Twenty-four acute rejections were detected histologically.