Delayed Presentation of Malignancy-Associated Pseudoachalasia of the Gastric Cardia.

Pseudoachalasia is a condition in which symptoms, manometry, and imaging findings highly resemble primary achalasia but has a secondary etiology. The majority of patients with pseudoachalasia have the condition as the result of a malignancy, most often at the gastroesophageal junction. There may be issues with timely identification of this malignancy as symptoms are often obscure with diagnostic testing yielding nonspecific results. We describe a case of a 65-year-old diabetic female smoker with a four-month history of intractable vomiting, abdominal pain, and weight loss who was belatedly found to have an adenocarcinoma at the gastric cardia necessitating a total gastrectomy and chemotherapy administration. The case educates clinicians on the clinical alarm symptoms related to malignant pseudoachalasia and stresses the paramount importance of performing a timely esophagogastroduodenoscopy in all cases of achalasia, even with seemingly normal imaging, to rule out pseudoachalasia related to malignancy.

Eustachian Valve Endocarditis in a Patient With Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease.

Endocarditis is a serious infectious disease of the endocardial surface of the heart, predominantly involving the heart valves, and it results from the colonization and proliferation of microorganisms within the bloodstream. The condition primarily affects individuals with underlying cardiac abnormalities or those who have undergone invasive procedures. Symptoms may include pyrexia, fatigue, arthralgia, and new cardiac murmur. We present a case of a young male patient who had recently undergone surgery and developed eustachian valve endocarditis (EVE), a condition scarcely described in the literature.

Carfilzomib-Induced Tumor Lysis Syndrome and Biventricular Heart Failure in a Patient With Multiple Myeloma.

Carfilzomib is a proteasome inhibitor (PI) used in multiple myeloma (MM) that is resistant to other therapies. Despite its efficacy and potency, carfilzomib has been associated with kidney injuries, cardiovascular toxic effects, and hematological adverse events. Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) following the use of PIs in MM, a malignancy not known to cause TLS, has seldom been reported. We present a case of a patient with a known diagnosis of MM who received prior therapy including bortezomib, a first-generation PI, developing worsening heart failure and new onset TLS days after the administration of carfilzomib.