Left Atrial Spontaneous Echo Contrast in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy with Atrial Fibrillation

Transesophageal echocardiography was performed to assess the incidence of left atrial spontaneous echo contrast in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, who were divided into two groups according to the presence (group 1-A; 10 patients) or absence (group 1-B; 5 patients) of persistent atrial fibrillation. Twelve patients with atrial fibrillation (group 2) served as control. Among these, 5 patients had mitral regurgitation and 8 patients lone atrial fibrillation. Left atrial spontaneous echo contrast was detected in 8 patients (80%) in group 1-A, none in group 1-B, and 3 patients (25%) in group 2. The incidence of echo contrast in group 1-A was significantly higher than that in the other 2 groups. The size of the left atrium was not statistically different among the 3 groups. Accordingly, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with atrial fibrillation seemed to be a specific diseased state to favor the development of the left atrial spontaneous echo contrast. Previous reports suggested that the presence of left atrial spontaneous contrast was considered as a warning sign of left atrial thrombus and would be an indicator of increased risk of embolism. 1)2)3) Three of the 8 patients who had spontaneous echo contrast in group 1-A had a history of systemic embolization. We proposed that patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with atrial fibrillation were in a high risk state of thromboembolism

Acute intraabdominal hemorrhage from an aneurysm on uterine artery

A 36-year-old woman was underwent emergency laparotomy for acute intraabdominal hemorrhage, but bleeding points were not found. Abdominal pains continued after the laparotomy, and rupture of aneurysm on uterine artery was found in angiography. An transcatheter arterial embolization was done for the uterine artery, and the aneurysm was found to disappear in 4-day-after the angiography. Rupture of an aneurysm on uterine artery should be considered for the causes of acute intraabdominal hemorrhage

Impact of the Ce 4f4f states in the electronic structure of the intermediate-valence superconductor CeIr3_3

The electronic structure of the $f$-based superconductor $\mathrm{CeIr_3}$ was studied by photoelectron spectroscopy. The energy distribution of the $\mathrm{Ce}~4f$ states were revealed by the $\mathrm{Ce}~3d-4f$ resonant photoelectron spectroscopy. The $\mathrm{Ce}~4f$ states were mostly distributed in the vicinity of the Fermi energy, suggesting the itinerant character of the $\mathrm{Ce}~4f$ states. The contribution of the $\mathrm{Ce}~4f$ states to the density of states (DOS) at the Fermi energy was estimated to be nearly half of that of the $\mathrm{Ir}~5d$ states, implying that the $\mathrm{Ce}~4f$ states have a considerable contribution to the DOS at the Fermi energy. The $\mathrm{Ce}~3d$ core-level and $\mathrm{Ce}~3d$ X-ray absorption spectra were analyzed based on a single-impurity Anderson model. The number of the $\mathrm{Ce}~4f$ states in the ground state was estimated to be $0.8-0.9$, which is much larger than the values obtained in the previous studies (i.e., $0-0.4$).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted to Electronic Structur

Electronic structures and magnetic moments of Co3FeN thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy

We evaluated electronic structures and magnetic moments in Co3FeN epitaxial films on SrTiO3(001). The experimentally obtained hard x-ray photoemission spectra of the Co3FeN film have a good agreement with those calculated. Site averaged spin magnetic moments deduced by x-ray magnetic circular dichroism were 1.52 μ B per Co atom and 2.08 μ B per Fe atom at 100 K. They are close to those of Co4N and Fe4N, respectively, implying that the Co and Fe atoms randomly occupy the corner and face-centered sites in the Co3FeN unit cell