International journal of cardiology
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Relaxation effects of lavender aromatherapy improve coronary flow velocity reserve in healthy men evaluated by transthoracic Doppler echocardiography.
It has been reported that mental stress is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular events and impairs coronary circulation. Lavender aromatherapy, one of the most popular complementary treatments, is recognized as a beneficial mental relaxation therapy. However, no study has examined the effect of this therapy on coronary circulation. We aimed to assess the effect of lavender aromatherapy on coronary circulation by measuring coronary flow velocity reserve (CFVR) with noninvasive transthoracic Doppler echocardiography (TTDE). ⋯ Lavender aromatherapy reduced serum cortisol and improved CFVR in healthy men. These findings suggest that lavender aromatherapy has relaxation effects and may have beneficial acute effects on coronary circulation.
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Letter Case Reports
"Lots of clots": multiple thromboemboli including a huge paradoxical embolus in a 29-year old man.
Paradoxical embolism occurs when a venous thrombus passes into the arterial circulation, most commonly through an intracardiac shunt. This phenomenon has been associated with catastrophic outcomes such as stroke and ischemic limb. We report the case of a 29-year old man with multiple thromboemboli including a deep venous thrombus, bilateral pulmonary emboli, and a paradoxical embolus into his left subclavian artery. We postulate the underlying predisposition and sequence of events that may have resulted in these multiple blood clots and report on his successful surgical outcome.
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Letter Case Reports
An unusual presentation of mad honey poisoning: acute myocardial infarction.
An unusual type of food poisoning is commonly seen in the Black Sea coast of Turkey due to grayanotoxin containing toxic honey so called "mad honey" ingestion. In cases of toxication bradycardia and rhythm disturbances are commonly observed. Herein, we present a case of a patient who was admitted to the hospital because of acute myocardial infarction with normal coronary arteries after "mad honey" ingestion.
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Letter Case Reports
Free floating right atrial thrombus leading to acute pulmonary embolism.
The presence of right heart thrombi appears to increase the risk of mortality compared to the presence of pulmonary thromboemboli alone. The increased use of two-dimensional echocardiography has led to increased detection of these thromboemboli, particularly in patients with suspected or confirmed pulmonary emboli. The optimal management of the right heart thromboemboli remains unclear, but thrombolytic therapy with rt-PA appears to be rapidly effective in most patients resulting with complete resolution of the thrombus and improvement of pulmonary perfusion. Here, we present a case of free floating, worm-like thrombus in the right atrium which was lysed successfully by fibrinolytic therapy in a patient presenting with acute massive pulmonary embolism.
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Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) has been shown to be a very useful non-invasive technique for the detection of coronary artery disease. However, inadequate transthoracic images preclude the use of DSE in a significant proportion of patients. Transesophageal (TEE) or transthoracic contrast echocardiography (CE) can however overcome this limitation. ⋯ The kappa value for identical interpretation of a stress echocardiography study was nearly identical with both modalities 0.75 to 0.78. In poorly echogenic patients, DSE-CE is a valuable alternative for the detection of myocardial ischemia in comparison with DSE-TEE. Because DSE-CE is more comfortable than TEE, it should be used in patients with suboptimal transthoracic echocardiograms for the evaluation of coronary artery disease during DSE.