Medicina
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Chagas disease is endemic in Latin America and remains a regional problem despite improvements in environmental health conditions that have helped to control its transmission. To know more about its prevalence in heart disease patients, we carried out a survey in our national (El Salvador) reference hospital. We reviewed the Chagas Lab's records 2013-2015 to find out how many of the patients admitted to the Hospital's Heart Unit were serologically positives for Trypanosoma cruzi infection and which the associated diagnoses were. ⋯ Out of 557 (37.8%) patients with positive serology for Chagas infection, 97 (17.4%) were eventually admitted to the Heart Unit. Among these 97 Chagas infected patients with heart disease, 40 (41.2%) met the criteria for permanent pacemaker placement, while only 13 of 191 (6.8%) patients with non-chagasic heart disease met these criteria. The frequency of heart atrioventricular block associated with Trypanosoma cruzi infection was higher than frequencies reported in South American studies.
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The most common symptoms in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection are fever, cough, odynophagia, headache, myalgia, and diarrhea. A much smaller percentage have dizziness, rhinorrhea, and hemoptysis as associated symptoms. ⋯ This report describes the case of a 49-year-old patient with a history of recent COVID-19 infection with requirement of mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure, who developed during hospitalization in the general ward with parapneumonic pleural effusion and episodes of persistent hemoptysis that required surgical treatment. During surgery, a significant fibro-adhesion process and a congestive lung with focal increased consistency and areas of necrosis were found.
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Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass and function. Its presence darkens the prognosis of cirrhotic patients. The gold standard for the description of sarcopenia is the Skeletal Muscle Index (SMI). ⋯ There was a very good correlation between the tomography methods with the gold standard. The correlation with ultrasound and strength was good. In the evaluation of sensitivity, specificity and AUC, it was not found a useful method when comparing with the SMI.
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We describe a patient with COVID-19, with pericardial effusion, cardiac tamponade and severe myocardial depression. A 51-year-old woman, previously healthy, with mild COVID-19 presented with three episodes of syncope. She was admitted to the emergency room. ⋯ A bedside ultrasound showed pericardial effusion and tamponade; drainage was performed; transoesophageal ultrasound showed moderate deterioration of biventricular systolic function; global longitudinal strain -14.2%, estimated Fey 43%; global circumferential strain -10.1%. Seven days after admission, CT scan revealed bilateral infiltrates and pericardial thickening with post-contrast enhancement and mild pericardial effusion. On day 12 post admission, inotropic support was discontinued; patient on mechanical ventilation weaning and haemodynamically stable.
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Heart transplantation is currently a procedure of choice for patients with advanced heart failure. Despite a continuous improvement in morbidity and mortality made to date, complications requiring hospitalization continue to be high. The main objective of this study was to describe complications that required hospitalization after a heart transplant, and the secondary objective is to evaluate its incidence according to age group in a cohort of heart transplant recipients in Argentina. ⋯ Mortality density incidence was 8 (95% CI 5.4-11.7) per 100-patients/year for the group that had readmission and 1 per 100-patients/year (95% CI 0.4-2.8) for the group that did not have. We conclude that complications requiring hospitalization are frequent in transplanted patients and affect long-term survival. The main causes of readmission are graft rejection and infections, and they had similar incidence in the age groups we analyzed.