Cardiac and pulmonary artery emboli are lethal complications following vertebroplasty. Clinicians should recognise these fatal complications immediately and surgical extraction is mandatory and provides the best outcome.

Pulmonary hypertension in association with carcinomatosis was first described over 100 years ago (Bristow, 1868). Kane et al. (1975), however, found only 23 reported cases of multiple tumour emboli causing dyspnoea, adding 16 of their own. Only four of these cases were reported from the British Isles. Sarcomas, although commonly metastasising to the lungs have not previously been reported as gi...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the characteristics and value of 3D dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance pulmonary angiography (3D-DCE-MRPA) for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE). Among patients suspected with PE, 30 cases were scheduled for 3D-DCE-MRPA [magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) group], and 30 cases were examined using multislice computed tomographic pulmo...

Despite the large number of gunshot wounds treated in civilian and military practice, embolization of missiles to the pulmonary artery is relatively uncommon. In a review of 7,500 medical reports from casualties from the Vietnam Vascular Registry, only 22 patients with known vascular trauma had missile emboli (0.3%), and of those, only 4 (.0005%) were to the pulmonary artery. Causative agents o...

A 20-year-old man was admitted to a regional hospital with fevers, rigors, anorexia and left upper quadrant pain. It was his fourth presentation to the emergency department in the preceding 10 days. On the first two presentations, he had been sent home with a provisional diagnosis of renal colic. After review by his general practitioner, he had undergone outpatient imaging that identified filli...

The authors undertook a randomised prospective study to investigate the contribution of thigh tourniquets to the formation of intra-operative venous emboli during lower limb surgery. Patients were randomised to have a thigh tourniquet or no tourniquet and transoesophageal echocardiography was used to detect embolic signals in the right heart during and after knee arthroscopy. Three physicians b...