A NUMBER of cases of foreign bodies within the heart or pericardium have been reported in the last 100 years. Most of these communications, except for the series of Harken and Zoll,1 are based on single cases of a foreign body in the heart consisting of bullets,2'3 hypodermic needles,4 5 polyethylene catheters,6' 7and Pudenz8 9 and Holter valves,10 both utilized for the treatment of hydrocephal...

Background Pulmonary hypertension carries significant morbidity and mortality in children. Early diagnosis management may improve outcomes children with pulmonary hypertension. Heart catheterization, a gold standard for diagnosing hypertension, is an invasive procedure not widely available. Echocardiography can be used as alternative diagnostic tool hypertension.
 Objective To determine th...

Connective Tissue Disease (CTD) is an autoimmune disease involving connective tissues, including sjogren syndrome (pSS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic sclerosis (SSc), mixed tissue (MCTD), lupus erythematosus (SLE), etc. [1,2]. Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) refers to a pathological condition in which the pulmonary artery pressure rises above certain threshold, causing right heart ...

Complete atrioventricular block (CAVB) during cardiac catheterization is a rare complication. We describe a patient with preexisting complete right bundle branch block who developed CAVB during left-sided cardiac catheterization. CAVB was induced when a left-sided catheter was passed through the aortic valve. We speculate that the patient's His bundle was injured by mechanical compression. Phys...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Right heart catheterization is traditionally performed using a femoral vein approach that involves admission, bed rest, and risks of bleeding and hematoma. Recent studies have confirmed safety of the use of forearm vein for right cardiac catheterization. In the present study, we evaluated the feasibility of right cardiac catheterization via the antecubital fossa vein i...

OBJECTIVE To determine the diagnostic accuracy of echocardiography for indicating surgery without catheterization in patients with congenital heart disease through a prospective analysis and comparison of the echocardiographic diagnosis with the intraoperative findings, or invasive study, or both. METHODS From February 2000 to January 2001, 493 patients with congenital heart diseases indicate...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to define age-stratified, procedure-specific benchmark radiation dose levels during interventional catheterization for congenital heart disease. BACKGROUND There is a paucity of published literature with regard to radiation dose levels during catheterization for congenital heart disease. Obtaining benchmark radiation data is essential for assessing the imp...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the role of right heart catheterization in the diagnosis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). METHODS We evaluated clinical, functional, and hemodynamic data from all patients who underwent right heart catheterization because of diagnostic suspicion of PAH--in the absence of severe left ventricular dysfunction (LVD), significant changes in pulmonary function tests, ...

Many studies of the pressures in the left atrium and the left ventricle of patients with mitral valve disease have been published. Initially obtained by direct puncture of the cardiac chambers at operation, such recordings have since been made possible by the development of techniques of left atrial puncture as a diagnostic procedure before operation. Direct determinations of the left atrial pr...

Constrictive pericardial disease developing after open heart surgery is not a well-recognized complication of this procedure. It has been reported only a few times and usually not with good hemodynamic data before and after the subsequent pericardiectomy. We presently report a patient who developed constrictive pericardial disease five years after mitral valve replacement. This was documented w...