Histoenzymological study of myocardial ATPase activity in experimental infarction in the rat.

Histoenzymological techniques were used to examine ATPase activity in rat heart muscle fibres after experimental infarction. 25 hours after coronary ligation, ATPase activity in all ventricular section fibres was high, homogeneous at pH 9.4, sections. 48 hours after ligation, necrotic ventricular fibres appeared, leaving only a thin layer of fibres which had apparently preserved their myofibrillar ATPase. These results indicate that, unlike mitochondrial enzyme activity, myofibrillar ATPase activity is relatively resistant to ischaemia.

[Pulmonary arterial hypertension caused by neoplastic thrombosis of the pulmonary artery]. / Hypertension artérielle pulmonaire par thrombose artérielle pulmonaire néoplasique.

Neoplastic thrombosis of the pulmonary artery is a rare and little known cause of pulmonary arterial hypertension. The clinical picture is one of acute respiratory failure and progressive right ventricular failure caused by pre-capillary pulmonary hypertension. In the living patient there is no way of distinguishing this condition from that of subacute cor pulmonale due to embolism, especially as the primary tumour is not always found either because it is too small or because it has already regressed by the time it has metastasised. The diagnosis usually rests on histological examination of the lungs, and two pathological types can be distinguished: carcinomatous lymphangitis with secondary invasion and thrombosis of the pulmonary arterioles on the one hand, and the neoplastic arterial emboli of a chorio-epithelioma on the other.

[Biventricular massive infarction with rupture of a mitral papillary muscle and a tricuspid papillary muscle]. / Infarctus massif biventriculaire avec rupture d'un pilier mitral et d'un pilier tricuspidien. Etude anatomique.

The authors report the case of a man of 62 who was admitted with a clinical and electrocardiographic picture of a posterior infarction which was very soon complicated by collapse and anuria. The findings on catheterisation of the right side of the heart were as expected. The cardiac index was very low, and the major abnormality was a type of adiastole with equal pressures in the right ventricle and the auricle of the right atrium. Despite an attempt to assist the circulation by an intra-aortic ballon, the patient died within a few hours. The postmortem examination confirmed the presence of a massive infarction of the left ventricle, but also of the right ventricle, together with rupture of the posterior papillary muscle of the mitral valve, and ischaemic rupture of one papillary muscle of the tricuspid valve.