[Patent foramen ovale and cardiovascular stroke: the eternal dilemma].

Ischemic stroke is one of the leading causes of mortality and the most important determinant of disability in developed countries. Its association with patent foramen ovale is one of the more controversial issues of the literature, also because paradoxical embolism is frequently a diagnosis of suspicion. Up to now, no clinical randomized studies unequivocally demonstrated the causality of this association.

Association between carotid and coronary artery disease in patients with aortic valve stenosis: an angiographic study.

Background: Patients with aortic stenosis have a high prevalence of coronary artery disease, but there is little information about the association of coronary artery disease and carotid artery disease.

Methods: The study includes 317 consecutive patients with aortic stenosis, who underwent carotid and coronary angiography during the same catheterization before aortic valve replacement.

Results: At univariate analysis, the prevalence of coronary artery disease was associated with (1) presence of carotid artery disease (P < .

Early involvement of central nervous system in type I diabetic patients.

Objective: To investigate whether the asymptomatic involvement of the central and peripheral nervous systems may be an early complication of diabetes.

Research Design And Methods: We studied early impairment of the central and peripheral nervous system pathways in 15 type I diabetic patients with good metabolic control and short disease duration and in 10 healthy control subjects using a set of neurophysiological tests.

Results: Results in diabetic subjects showed 1) impairment of motor (7% and somatosensory (13%) pathways of the central nervous system, 2) impairment of motor and sensory conduction velocities (40-60%), and 3) normal values of the vibration perception threshold and cardiovascular autonomic tests.

Echocardiographic prediction of the final event in patients dying of acute myocardial infarction.

From an autopsy series of 346 patients who died of acute myocardial infarction, we selected 36 cases for whom echocardiographic data preceding death were available: 17 cases died from a rupture of the left ventricular free wall (group A) and 19 from pump failure (group B). Our aim was to investigate whether any echocardiographic parameter could predict the final event. The total wall motion score, regional wall motion score index and percent of abnormally contracting myocardium were calculated.