A popular saying holds that if one can hear a heart murmur in the middle of a loud and busy emergency department, then by definition the murmur is significant. Whether or not this is actually true, it does capture the frustration emergency physicians feel when trying to diagnose or manage valvular pathologic conditions with familiar yet limited tools. This article focuses on the valve-related i...

A 58-year-old woman was referred to our hospital with a chief complaint of exertional dyspnea. Bronchoscopy failed to establish a diagnosis, and the patient subsequently died suddenly due to respiratory insufficiency because of advanced pulmonary hypertension (PH). The pathological diagnosis at autopsy was pulmonary veno-occlusive disease (PVOD). PVOD is difficult to diagnose antemortem and has...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular diseases arise during 0,2% to 4% of all pregnancies in the industrialized world. In Germany, this type of complication, which is sometimes lethal, affects approximately 30 000 pregnant women per year. METHODS We performed a simple literature search in the NCBI databases for publications that appeared from 2008 to 2010 and that contained the search terms "pregnancy" a...

Chronic renal insufficiency and osteoporosis have become very common among old people in China. Hyperparathyroidism caused by renal insufficiency would result in turbulence of bone metabolism and unbalance between serum calcium and phosphorus. The aim of this study is to investigate the BMD, PTH, CT and 25(OH)-Vit's significance for screening and diagnosing chronic renal insufficiency. In this ...

Papillary fibroelastomas of the heart are relatively rare benign tumors and although they can be symptom free, symptoms such as cerebral ischemia and cardiac infarction can be lethal. It is important to diagnose this tumor using echocardiography, because lethal embolisms can be prevented by surgical resection. Recurrence of this tumor has not been reported and multiple tumors are rare. The pres...

A 22 year old woman had signs of rheumatic mitral and aortic valve disease early in pregnancy. Cardiac catheterization was performed during her third month of pregnancy under two-dimensional echocardiographic control without the use of ionizing radiation. Severe mitral stenosis with mild aortic stenosis was found. Five cubic centimeters of 5 percent dextrose in water were injected by hand to ob...

Congenital quadricuspid aortic valve (QAV) is a rare cardiac anomaly. Several different anatomical variations of a quadricuspid aortic valve have been described. Aortic regurgitation is the predominant valvular dysfunction associated with QAV and patients tend to present in their 5(th) or 6(th) decade of life. This anomaly is rarely picked up by transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE). A comprehensi...

Atrial fibrillation is a common clinical problem and may be complicated with events of thromboembolism, especially in patients with valvular heart disease. Splenic infarction is a rare manifestation of the reported cases. The symptoms may vary from asymptomatic to severe peritonitis, though early diagnosis may lessen the probability of severe complications and lead to a good prognosis. We repor...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate pediatric atrioventricular valve repair with artificial chordae. METHODS Between February 2001 and January 2006, artificial chords were used in 21 children with severe mitral or tricuspid valve regurgitation. Patients with AVSD were excluded. Median age was 84 (1-194) months. Five patients had isolated tricuspid valve anomalies, 16 had mitral valve anomalies (associated ...

Lntraoperative two-dimensional echocardiography allows visualization of cardiac anatomy and function not possible by other techniques. Although preoperative evaluation by noninvasive methods is usually adequate for diagnosis of cardiac tumors, two-dimensional echocardiography can be beneficial intraoperatively. Intraoperative echocardiography provides an accurate evaluation of cardiac anatomy, ...