Metastatic Ewing's sarcoma involving the right ventricle

Cardiac metastasis of Ewing's sarcoma is rare. A 22-year-old woman was admitted with complaints of palpitation and fatigue on exertion. She had a seven-year history of radical right tibial resection for Ewing's sarcoma and was also receiving chemotherapy for lung metastasis of Ewing's sarcoma. Both transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography demonstrated a single, large (3x3.5 cm) inhomogeneous mass located in the free wall of the right ventricle. To differentiate the mass from a massive thrombus, contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging was performed. The mass showed partial contrast enhancement, suggesting a malignant metastatic mass. Surgical resection was not considered due to accompanying lung metastasis and potentially poor outcome of the operation

Treatment of Libman-Sacks endocarditis by combination of warfarin and immunosuppressive therapy

Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is a clinical disorder that creates an increased risk of arterial or venous thrombotic events or pregnancy-associated complications and includes the presence of autoantibodies against negatively charged phospholipids. This syndrome is often associated with systemic autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Libman-Sacks endocarditis is a form of non-bacterial thrombotic endocarditis and is infrequently seen in APS. There are few data documenting the echocardiographic response of APS valve disease to medical treatment. This is an unusual case of a young female patient with SLE and APS who had chorea and non-bacterial thrombotic aortic valve endocarditis. Echocardiography revealed that the vegetation had receded after a combination of warfarin and immunosuppressive therapy

Assessment of longitudinal left ventricular systolic function by different echocardiographic modalities in patients with newly diagnosed mild-to-moderate hypertension

Objective: Standard echocardiographic methods reflect chamber dynamics and do not provide a direct measure of myocardial fiber shortening. Therefore we evaluated longitudinal left ventricular myocardial function by tissue Doppler echocardiography; strain (S), strain rate (SR), tissue Doppler velocity (TDV) in newly diagnosed mild to moderate hypertensive patients

Relationship between left ventricular hypertrophy, hypertensive retinopathy, microalbuminuria and echocardiographic modalities in newly diagnosed hypertensive patients

Longitudinal myocardial function (LMF) may be impaired while systolic function is still normal. We investigated relationship between LMF and hypertensive organ damage in newly diagnosed stage I hypertensive patients. A total of 57 patient with never treated stage I hypertension and 48 matched healthy control subject were enrolled in the study. Conventional 2-D, Doppler and tissue wave Doppler imaging (TDI) echocardiography were used. LMF was evaluated by the septal and lateral strain (S) and strain rate (SR) measurements. Hypertensive complications were evaluated by the urine microalbumin levels and retinal examination. A multivariate regression analysis was perfomed to assess the relation between the variables. Ejection fraction, mid-wall fractional shortenning, systolic movement rates (TDs) in TDI were similar both in hypertensive and control groups. In patients with left ventricular hypertrophy, septal TDs (7.29 +/- A 1.28 vs. 8.06 +/- A 1.19 cm, P = 0.03), lateral TDs (8.46 +/- A 1.83 vs. 9.87 +/- A 2.42 cm, P = 0.01) and lateral S (-13.02 +/- A 7.83 vs. -18.86 +/- A 8.60%, P = 0.01) values were significantly lower. Septal S (-13.67 +/- A 3.52 vs. -19.09 +/- A 5.96%, P < 0.01) and SR (-0.83 +/- A 0.29 vs. -1.22 +/- A 0.28 1/S, P < 0.01) were significantly decreased in hypertensive patients with microalbuminuria. Septal S value was also significantly decreased in patients with retinopathy (-14.76 +/- A 5.55 vs. -20.20 +/- A 5.44%, P = 0.01). Multivariate analysis showed that only septal and lateral S values were independent factors for the retinopathy and left ventricular hypertrophy, respectively. In hypertensive patients, LMF established by the measurement of S and SR, might be impaired and also related with end organ damage while global circumferential function is preserved