Acute myocardial infarction with myocardial perfusion defect detected by contrast-enhanced computed tomography.

The first case was a 68-year-old woman who had acute migratory pain from back to anterior chest and the second case was 66-year-old man with a cardiac tamponade. Two cases were demonstrated with a low density area of the left ventricular postero-lateral wall with conventional contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CE-CT) performed to differentiate the diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome and acute aortic dissection. Subsequent coronary angiograms showed the lesions of left circumflex.

Serial angiographic follow-up beyond 10 years after coronary artery bypass grafting.

Background: The long-term prognosis and serial angiographic follow-up beyond 10 years in patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) have not been fully studied in Japan.

Methods And Results: In the present study data from 71 patients who underwent CABG before 1992 were analyzed. Thirty patients had a saphenous vein graft (SVG) only group, and the remaining 41 had a left internal thoracic artery graft to the left anterior descending coronary artery (LITA) group; 6 patients died from malignancy, which was the most common cause of death after CABG.

Clinical features of acute pulmonary thromboembolism in younger patients.

The incidence of acute pulmonary thromboembolism (APTE) in younger patients is extremely low compared with older patients, so the clinical features of these younger patients with APTE is unknown. In the present study, 8 patients with APTE who were less than 40 years old (YG) were compared with 40 patients who were more than 41 years of age (OG). All YG patients had coagulopathy compared with 3 patients in the OG (p<0.

Plasma levels of brain natriuretic peptide increase in patients with idiopathic bilateral atrial dilatation.

Idiopathic bilateral atrial dilatation (IBAD) is an extremely rare anomaly and is usually associated with atrial fibrillation. Plasma levels of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) have been shown to increase in patients with atrial fibrillation. However, secretion of ANP and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) in patients with IBAD remains unclear.