[Decompensated valve failure: the revival of balloon valvuloplasty - percutaneous valve intervention].

Calcified aortic stenosis is the dominating valve disease. Patients affected are most commonly elderly people, who often show associated comorbidities like reduced left ventricular function, impaired renal function, and pulmonary hypertension. The risk of open heart surgery is elevated.

Myocardial Infarction associated with methadone and/or dihydrocodeine.

Chest pain and myocardial infarction occurring in young people with angiographically normal coronary arteries is well documented. Opiates have a cardioprotective effect and are used in acute heart attacks. We described a 22-year-old opioid addicted male patient who suffered a myocardial infarction following the consumption of methadone and dihydrocodeine.

[Primary systemic amyloidosis with cardiac manifestations].

History And Findings: A Vietnamese woman, now 68 years old, had for ten years been known to have a monoclonal lambda light-chain gammopathy. Two years before the present admission her resting ECG had shown absent R waves in V2 to V4, first-degree A-V block and preterminal negative T waves. Results of left heart catheterization and echocardiography were essentially normal.

Reproducibility of myocardial contrast echocardiography in human studies.

Experimental and clinical studies were performed to assess the ability of myocardial contrast echocardiography for quantitation of regional myocardial blood flow. To evaluate whether myocardial contrast echocardiography is a reproducible technique in humans, 18 nonselected patients undergoing coronary angiography were studied. A total of 107 intracoronary injections into either the left or the right coronary artery were analyzed by computer assisted videodensitometry for peak intensity, contrast decay half-time, and area under the curve.

[Myocardial contrast echocardiography for the follow-up after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty].

Myocardial contrast echocardiography was performed, before and after successful elective percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTCA) of a main coronary artery, in 35 patients (31 men, 4 women; mean age 56 +/- 6 years). After intracoronary injection of microbubbles-containing 2 ml iopromide, contrast half-life (t/2) and maximal echo-intensity (Imax) in the myocardial region supplied by the target vessel were measured. While t/2 decreased from 8.