[A 47-year-old patient with paroxysmal arterial hypertension and gastric tumors].

Arterial hypertension caused by a paraganglioma is rare and approximately one third of all cases of paraganglioma occur as part of a hereditary syndrome. Among these the Carney-Stratakis syndrome is characterized by the occurrence of paraganglioma/pheochromocytoma and gastrointestinal stromal tumors caused by germline mutations of the succinate dehydrogenase subunit genes (B-D). We report the case of a 47-year-old female patient suffering from Carney-Stratakis syndrome with an endocrine active thoracic paraganglioma which was successfully resected with the assistance of a heart-lung machine and the gastric stromal tumors were removed in a second surgical intervention.

[Induction of myocardial neoangiogenesis by human growth factors. A new therapeutic approach in coronary heart disease].

Currently available approaches for treating human coronary heart disease aim to relieve symptoms and the risk of myocardial infarction either by reducing myocardial oxygen demand, preventing further disease progression, restoring coronary blood flow pharmacologically or mechanically, or bypassing the stenotic lesions and obstructed coronary artery segments. Gene therapy, especially using angiogenic growth factors, has emerged recently as a potential new treatment for cardiovascular disease. Following extensive experimental research on angiogenic growth factors, the first clinical studies on patients with coronary heart disease and peripheral vascular lesions have been performed.

[Problems in differential diagnosis and therapy of intracardiac space-occupying lesions--myxoma and thrombus].

The total removal of the myxoma under extracorporeal circulation from the origin maintains the optimal surgical treatment. Differentiation between myxoma and thromboses is a problem of preoperative diagnostics. Both tumors show unspecific symptoms.