ABSTRACT
The authors report a case of Candida parapsilosis endocarditis in a non-drug-addicted young patient who, 6 months before the manifestation of endocarditis, was submitted to cardiac surgery. This is the first report from Greece and the second found in the accessible literature.
Subject(s)
Candidiasis/etiology , Endocarditis/microbiology , Heart Valve Prosthesis/adverse effects , Adult , Amphotericin B/therapeutic use , Aortic Valve/surgery , Candida/isolation & purification , Candidiasis/drug therapy , Endocarditis/drug therapy , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
A new type of steerable guiding catheter is described for use in percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). It is simple to use and externally steerable. The catheter incorporates a steering system by means of which the catheter tip can be made to assume the form of either a right or left Judkins catheter or to be fixed in any intermediate configuration, entirely through external manipulation. We used this new guiding catheter to perform PTCA on 15 patients. Single lesions were found in the left anterior descending branch in seven patients, in the right coronary artery in four, and in the circumflex artery in two, whereas stenosis of a coronary bypass graft was found in two patients. Angioplasty was successful in all cases. There were no complications, during either the procedure or the postoperative hospitalization. The steerable guiding catheter described here may prove useful for PTCA in cases where a conventional catheter cannot be placed accurately or in cases with multi-vessel coronary disease.
Subject(s)
Angioplasty, Balloon, Coronary/instrumentation , Cardiac Catheterization/instrumentation , Coronary Disease/therapy , Adult , Aged , Clinical Trials as Topic , Coronary Angiography , Coronary Artery Bypass , Coronary Disease/diagnostic imaging , Equipment Design , Female , Graft Occlusion, Vascular/therapy , Humans , Male , Middle AgedABSTRACT
A new technique of peripheral venous contrast echocardiography is described which uses a special type of injection catheter to achieve a much greater density of image of the cardiac cavities. The multi-hole catheter gave consistently better results than the conventional single hole catheter under trials both in vitro and vivo.
