[Cardiomyopathy of the right ventricle revealed by pulmonary embolism].

The authors report a case of cardiomyopathy of the right ventricle revealed suddenly in a presentation of pulmonary embolism in relation to a large thrombus that developed in an enormous, extremely hypokinetic right ventricle. The scenario suggests dysplasia without rhythm disorder. This case allows a discussion on the multiple variants of arhythmogenic dysplasia of the right ventricle.

Chronic atrial fibrillation ablation impact on endocrine and mechanical cardiac functions.

Aims: Assess the impact of persistent/permanent atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation on endocrine and mechanical cardiac functions.

Methods And Results: In all, 43 patients (40 males, 53 +/- 12 years) undergoing persistent/permanent AF ablation had atrial (ANP) and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) measurements before day 1, 3, and 3 months after ablation. In the same period of time transthoracic echocardiography was performed.

Global and regional myocardial function quantification by two-dimensional strain: application in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Objectives: Recently, a novel method to measure strain from standard two-dimensional images has been developed. Our goal was to characterize global and regional systolic function abnormalities using this technique in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Background: Strain has been proposed as a sensitive tool to detect early systolic function abnormalities in HCM.

[Diagnosis difficulty in occult constrictive pericarditis].

We report the case of a 42 years woman known to have a cardiac heart failure attributed to restrictive cardiomyopathy for want of any other plausible diagnosis. Evolution and repeted investigations finally permitted to rectify the diagnosis by revealing a constrictive pericarditis, remained occult 9 years during. The differentiation of restrictive cardiomyopathy and constrictive pericarditis has been a perennial problem in clinical cardiology.

[Limits of the Valsalva manoeuvre for the detection of pseudonormal mitral flow].

The pseudonormal mitral profile is difficult to distinguish from a normal profile with echocardiography. Ever since a study showing that the Valsalva manoeuvre could unmask the appearance of relaxation disorders of transmitral flow (E/A < 1) in subjects with cardiopathy, this method has been proposed for the analysis of diastolic function. Very few data exist on the effect of this method in healthy subjects.