[Huge right atrial myxoma revealed by heart failure]. / Enorme myxome des cavités cardiaques droites révélé par une insuffisance cardiaque globale.

We report a case of 34 years old female with a diagnosis of a big right Atrial myxoma revealed by echocardiography. The treatment consisted on a surgical excision of the tumour under extra corporal circulation. The patient made a good post-operative recovery. Authors showed the clinical signs of these tumours to be various, and echocardiography to be the definitive diagnosis procedure.

[Arterial manifestations of Behcet's disease. A report of five operated cases]. / Manifestations artérielles de la maladie de Behçet. A propos de 5 cas opérés.

Vascular involvement in Behcet's disease is common, especially in deep vein thrombosis. Aneurysmal or occlusive arterial disease is, however, rare. The authors report five cases of vascular Behcet's disease reviewed over a period of 4 years (1996-1999). All these patients were men and the mean age was 38 years. The arterial disease was the presenting symptom of Behcet's disease in 3 cases. The other patients had been followed up for Behcet's disease for 4 years. The average time of onset of arterial disease was 7.2 years with respect to the presenting symptom, the range being 2 to 20 years. In all, seven arteries were involved, two patients having two arterial sites at the same time. The femoral artery was involved in 3 cases. The iliac artery was involved twice. One patient had a coronary thrombosis and the last case was of a pseudoaneurysm of the infra-renal abdominal aorta which ruptured into the retroperitoneal space. Six lesions were aneurysmal. All patients underwent surgery. The histological analysis of the resected lesions showed non-specific panvasculitis. The postoperative period was marked by short and medium term complications: four prosthetic thromboses and two anastomotic pseudo-aneurysms which required several surgical procedures and which led to two deaths. These results and a review of the literature underline the need to search for Behcet's disease in all cases of aneurysmal or occlusive arterial disease in young patients, especially those born in the Mediterranean regions. Surgical treatment should not be delayed. In these inflammatory conditions with pronounced perivascular involvement, the surgery is difficult and postoperative complications are common, especially anastomotic disunion. Medical treatment has no surgical implication, but does not prevent progression of the disease.

[Invasive thymoma extending into the superior vena cava and the right atrium: a case report and review of the literature]. / Thymome invasif à extension intra-cave supérieure et intra-atriale droite: à propos d'un cas et revue de la littérature.

If the neoplastic extension with the higher vena cava can be observed during the evolution of the invasive thymomes, the tumoral extension in the right auricle, remains on the other hand an exception. We report an invasive case of thymome to higher intracellar extension, right intraatrial and pleuropulmonary revealed by a syndrome undermines higher and a left pleurisy. The transthoracic echocardiography supplemented by the echocardiography transoesophageal pose the cardiac diagnosis of tumor, and it is the thoracic tomodensitometry which highlights a tumoral process mediastinal of malignant pace invading the left inominal venous trunk, the higher vena cava and extending in the right auricle. The diagnosis of certainty is carried by the endobronchial biopsy and the puncture tomodensitometric biopsy under control of the mediastinal mass after anatomopathological examination. Under chemotherapy, the evolution over 18 months is marked by the absence of cardiovascular complications in spite of the non regression of the tumoral mass. This observation stresses the importance of the realization of the echocardiography especially transoesophageal in front of all invasive thymome and the reliability of the puncture biopsy scanoguided like diagnoses technique not very invasive in the forms not extirpables. The forecast of this affection depends on the effectiveness of the processing. The surgery when it is possible, remains the principal therapeutic measurement which really proved reliable.

[Causes of failure analysis after cardiac transplantation. From a consecutive series of 91 cases]. / Analyse des causes d'échec après transplantation cardiaque. D'après une série consécutive de 91 cas.

Ninety-three cardiac transplantations were carried out in 91 patients (2 retransplantations) between March 1st 1987 and November 1st 1989, in 84 adults and 7 children under 15 years of age. The indications were dilated cardiomyopathy (48%), ischemic cardiomyopathy (35%), decompensated valvular heart disease (11%), congenital heart disease (3%) and two cases of Uhl's anomaly. Twelve patients underwent transplantation after external circulatory assistance (13%), 11 patients after inscription on the list of extreme emergencies, and 68 on an elective basis (74%). The postoperative immunosuppressive protocol was triple therapy: Ciclosporine, Azathioprine and Prednisone. Three of the children died. The early adult mortality was 9 cases (10.7%). It was 8% in patients operated electively. Major infectious complications occurred in 10 patients (11%). Rejection was looked for by systematic endomyocardial biopsy and echocardiography. Three hundred and forty-nine biopsies were made. Thirty-five patients (44%) had no problems of rejection. Seventy-nine patients have now been followed up for an average of 19 months. There were 7 late deaths. Seventy seven per cent of the survivors are asymptomatic. Acute rejection and transplant dysfunction were the two main causes of early mortality after cardiac transplantation. Although the long-term prognosis is uncertain, the medium-term results are very encouraging.

Aorto-coronary artery saphenous vein bypass surgery. A ten-year follow-up.

The 10-year follow-up of consecutive series of 126 patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery from January 1970 through December 1972 without associated procedures is reported. There were 112 men and 14 women with a mean age of 50.3 +/- 8.0 years. Indications for operation were stable angina pectoris in 35 cases and unstable angina in 91 cases. Eleven patients had one-vessel disease, 55 patients had two-vessel disease and 60 patients had three-vessel disease. The mean number of grafts per patient was 1.8. Graft patency rate was 78.4% at the time of early angiographic control (from one to 24 months). There were two early deaths and 47 late deaths. One patient was last to follow-up. Twenty-six of the late deaths were cardiac in nature (57.7%). The overall 10-year survival rate was 68.0 +/- 4.1%. The factors most clearly related to survival rate were: age (p less than 0.05) ischaemic ST-segment depressions on resting preoperative electrocardiogram (p less than 0.005), preoperative electrocardiographic evidence of anterior, septal or lateral myocardial infarction (p less than 0.05), ventricular function as assessed by preoperative left ventriculography (p less than 0.05). During the follow-up period 35.1% of survivors had had no recurrence of angina and 64.9% had experienced at least one episode of angina. At the ten-year evaluation 33 surviving patients considered themselves free of angina, 27 patients considered the angina to be less severe than before the operation and four considered it to be the same or more severe. A significant positive correlation was noted between clinical response and completeness of revascularization (p less than 0.05).

[Injuries of the pancreas in children. Apropos of 4 cases]. / Traumatismes du pancréas chez l'enfant.

The authors report 4 cases of pancreatic injury in children : 1 distal transection, 2 simple contusions and 1 pseudocyst of the head. They review the diagnostic approach to and treatment which is centered on the state of the pancreatic duct: external drainage when the pancreatic duct is safe, simple contusion or even pseudocyst, distal pancreatectomy, with or without splenectomy when the pancreatic duct has been transected in a complete pancreatic transection complicated or not with a pseudocyst.