Right Ventricle Outflow Obstruction in Biventricular Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy in Amyloidosis

Light-chain (AL) amyloidosis is the most common type of amyloidosis; cardiac involvement is rare but has a poor prognosis. Biventricular hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is an exceptional finding in amyloidosis and its association with obstructive right ventricular gradient is even rarer. We report the case of a male patient with biventricular hypertrophy suggesting amyloidosis, with an obstructive gradient in the right ventricle

A complicated steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome: a large intracardiac thrombus with bilateral distal embolization

Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is a consequence of the reduced ability of the glomerulus barrier to exclude proteins of intermediate size and other macromolecules from urine. Albumin and proteins that modulate the coagulation cascade are among the substances eliminated in urine. This is responsible of thromboembolic complication. The incidence of this extra renal complication is probably underestimated because of asymptomatic thromboembolic events. We report the case of a 23 years old man followed up for an idiopathic nephrotic syndrome since childhood who presented a large intracardiac thrombus complicated by distal embolisation of his two lower limbs, successfully treated by fogartisation-embolectomy and oral anticoagulation

Discrimination between patients with CVDs and healthy people by voiceprint using the MFCC and pitch

Heart diseases cause many deaths around the world every year, and his death rate makes the leader of the killer diseases. But early diagnosis can be helpful to decrease those several deaths and save lives. To ensure good diagnose, people must pass a series of clinical examinations and analyses, which make the diagnostic operation expensive and not accessible for everyone. Speech analysis comes as a strong tool which can resolve the task and give back a new way to discriminate between healthy people and person with cardiovascular diseases. Our latest paper treated this task but using a dysphonia measurement to differentiate between people with cardiovascular disease and the healthy one, and we were able to reach 81.5% in prediction accuracy. This time we choose to change the method to increase the accuracy by extracting the voiceprint using 13 Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients and the pitch, extracted from the people's voices provided from a database which contain 75 subjects (35 has cardiovascular diseases, 40 are healthy), three records of sustained vowels (aaaaa…, ooooo… .. and iiiiiiii….) has been collected from each one. We used the k-near-neighbor classifier to train a model and to classify the test entities. We were able to outperform the previous results, reaching 95.55% of prediction accuracy

Conservative management of spontaneous coronary artery dissection: a case report

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is arare cause of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) thatmainly occurs in young women with no risk factorsand no coronary atherosclerosis. Diagnosis is madeby invasive coronary angiography (CA), computedtomography coronary angiography (CTCA),intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and opticalcoherence tomography (OCT). The rarity of thisentity as well as the complications of invasivetreatment make it difficult to choose therapybetween conservative management, percutaneouscoronary intervention (PCI) or coronary arterybypass grafting (CABG). We report a case of a 36-year-old woman presented with non ST elevationmyocardial infarction (NSTEMI) related tospontaneous dissection of coronary arteries (leftmain trunk, left anterior descending artery and leftcircumflex artery) treated medically withspectacular results at 2 months, controlled by CTCA

Evaluation of the effect of duration on dialysis on echocardiographic parameters: A preliminary study

The excessive cardiovascular mortality seen in patients with end-stage renal disease seems to be closely related to accelerated coronary atherosclerosis. Some echocardiographic parameters such as left ventricular mass and diastolic dysfunction are implicated in ventricular dysfunction and mortality. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of duration on dialysis on some echocardiographic parameters. We enrolled 75 patients on hemodialysis, including 34 women, in our prospective study. The mean age was 42.5 ± 13.8 years. The echocardiographic parameters were all measured within 2 h after a dialysis session. The study population was divided into two groups: Group-1 consisted of patients on dialysis for 5 years. The two groups were similar regarding demographic characteristics and cardiovascular risk factors. On univariate analysis, a statistically significant difference was seen in the left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (P = 0.002), left ventricular end-syslotic diameter (P = 0.008), left ventricular mass (P = 0.006), inter-ventricular septum (P = 0.024), mitral flow deceleration time (P = 0.03), tricuspid anteroposterior systolic excursion (P = 0.01), inferior vena cava diameter (P = 0.04), left atrial size (P = 0.02), valvular calcification (P = 0.01) and pericardial effusion (P = 0.01) between the two groups. We conclude that the duration on dialysis is associated with changes in several echocardiographic parameters. Frequent follow-up with echocardiogram is recommended in the management of these patients

Knowledge, attitudes, and practice of organ donation in Morocco: A cross-sectional survey

In any health system, public awareness of organ donation fundamentally affects the organ transplantation programs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge and perception of the people in Morocco toward organ donation as well as to identify the reasons and determinants for refusal of organ donation. This opinion survey included a representative sample of 2000 participants in Morocco, and data related to sociodemographic characteristics, knowledge and self-opinion about organ donation, and reasons behind refusal were collected. Statistical analysis showed that 55.2% of the participants were women, the median age was 21 years, and 60.8% of included participants had secondary education. Almost two-thirds of surveyed participants (62.3%) showed a low to mid-level of knowledge about organ donation and transplantation in Morocco. About half of the interviewed participants (48.8%) refused to donate their organs. Concern about risk of medical error and the belief in trafficking of procured organs were the main reasons for refusal, seen in 66% and 62% of the interviewees, respectively. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression models showed that the older, the less educated and the less informed a person is, the less he accepted organ donation. Therefore, promotion of organ donation in Morocco should involve a regular information and awareness among the general population