[Immunoinflammatory changes (myocarditis?) in chronic heart failure in alcoholic patients].

Aim: To estimate the contribution of immuno-inflammatory changes to the formation of clinical and hemodynamic features in alcoholic patients with chronic heart failure (CHF).

Subjects And Methods: Forty-five males with CHF in the presence of alcohol-induced heart damage (AIHD) who had been admitted to therapeutic units for decompensated heart failure were examined. A control group consisted of 20 men with the CHF severity comparable with the NYHA classification in the presence of prior myocardial infarction.

[The viral and immunological characteristics of cardiomyopathies and myocarditis].

As many as 97 patients with myocardial lesions: congestive and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (CMP), postmyocarditis CMP (PM CMP), myocarditis (MC), alcoholic heart injury (AHI), coronary heart disease (CHD), vegetodysovarian myocardiodystrophy were examined by means of a complex of the virological tests (for Coxsackie B, Epstein-Barr and hepatitis B viruses) and immunoassays (for antibodies to different components of the myocardium, leukocyte migration inhibition test, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity test, measurements of T and B lymphocytes and their subpopulations, and so forth). Virus infection was shown to be of a role for the onset of acute MC (usually reversible) and congestive CMP. At the same time the autoimmune mechanisms of the lesions were conclusively ascertained in MC associated with heart failure and in PM CMP.

[Isolated mediastinal fibromatosis (clinical study and a brief review of the literature)].

Fibrosing processes of connective tissue of unknown etiology affect different anatomical sites either in an isolated or a combined way, masking frequently as tumorous diseases. Clinical manifestations are nonspecific, determined by the site and spread of a process and appear in the form of the syndrome of compression of the adjacent organs. Organ site of a process determines complications and prognosis of disease.

[Importance of alcoholism markers in the diagnosis of alcoholic heart lesions].

A study was made of opportunities for the use of some signs of alcoholic intoxication in the verification of alcoholic etiology of heart lesion. Clinical signs like hyperemia of the face with telangiectasia, venous plethora of the eyeballs, tremor of the lips, tongue, limbs, Dupuytren's contracture, enlarged liver size combined with a positive macrocytosis test and, to a lesser degree, with a higher activity of gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, and the detection of fatty hepatosis in liver puncture biopsy were shown to suggest alcoholic intoxication, and excluding other cases of heart lesion they can be of great help in the verification of diagnosis of alcoholic heart lesion.