[Heart failure in childhood]. / Scompenso cardiaco in età pediatrica.

Heart failure (HF) in pediatric patients shows many differences from adult HF because of biochemical and ultrastructural peculiarity due to contractility modifications for different loading conditions, often resulting from congenital heart diseases. The majority of heart diseases in pediatric patients with symptoms and signs of HF are due to severe heart diseases (such as ventricular septal defect, severe aortic stenosis, aortic coarctation syndrome). There are several reasons for early HF in the natural evolution of congenital and acquired heart diseases. They are of hemodynamic nature (pressure and volume overloading, reduced ventricular compliance), or due to systolic ventricular dysfunction. In order to optimize the medical and/or surgical treatment in these conditions an immediate etiological and pathophysiological evaluation should be done. In this regard the echocardiographic technique allows to reach a rapid and accurate diagnosis and a good therapeutic view in a non-invasive and easily to repeat way.

Extensive 200-million-year-Old continental flood basalts of the central atlantic magmatic province

The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) is defined by tholeiitic basalts that crop out in once-contiguous parts of North America, Europe, Africa, and South America and is associated with the breakup of Pangea. 40Ar/39Ar and paleomagnetic data indicate that CAMP magmatism extended over an area of 2.5 million square kilometers in north and central Brazil, and the total aerial extent of the magmatism exceeded 7 million square kilometers in a few million years, with peak activity at 200 million years ago. The magmatism coincided closely in time with a major mass extinction at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary.

Total anomalous left pulmonary venous connection with intact atrial septum: surgical treatment of a rare case.

Total anomalous left pulmonary venous connection with intact atrial septum is an extremely rare form of congenital heart disease. We describe a case never reported before in which the left pulmonary veins drained directly into the right atrium through a common vein. Surgical correction was successfully obtained by redirecting the blood flow through a newly created atrial septal defect into the left atrium using a gluteraldehyde-treated autologous pericardial patch. Follow-up at 6 months shows no signs of any complication.