The clinical respiratory journal
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Impending paradoxical embolism is a rare diagnosis that requires urgent treatment. We present a case where surgical thromboembolectomy was undertaken. The thrombus vanished from view on transesophageal ultrasound and was presumed to have undergone embolisation while bypass was established. Unexpectedly, it was found tangled in the superior vena cava cannula apertures.
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Comparative Study
Submaximal exercise testing may be superior to the 6-min walk test in assessing pulmonary arterial hypertension disease severity.
Submaximal exercise testing (SET) assesses functional exercise capacity in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients and provides additional physiologic information compared with the 6-min walk test (6MWT). The relative correlations of the 6MWT and SET using SHAPE-HF™ with other markers of PAH severity, particularly echocardiogram (ECHO)-derived mean pulmonary artery pressure (MPAP), have not been investigated. ⋯ SHAPE outperformed 6MWD in comparison with other measures of PAH disease severity.
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There are no larger studies of adults with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), focusing on the impact of spinal cord deformities on lung function assessment. ⋯ OI patients show spinal deformities influencing body height and lung function. Lung function tests should be corrected for reductions in body height by using arm-span height. OI patients should be evaluated with spirometry when vertebral deformities are suspected.