A Breathtaking Case of Pulmonary Hypertension with Frightening Complications and Intertwining Different Etiologies.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a major health problem with increasing awareness. Although most common cause of PH is left heart disease (Group 2 PH), life-threatening complications occur mostly in Group 1 (pulmonary arterial hypertension) and Group 4 (chronic thromboembolic PH) patients. Although external compression of the left main coronary artery (LMCA) due to pulmonary artery dilatation is rare, it is a life-threatening complication since it causes myocardial ischemia and sudden cardiac death. In addition, PH is more than a single clinical entity due to its complex mechanism in which more than one subgroup may develop over time in the same patient. This complex mechanism challenges us when diagnosing the patient and faces us with life-threatening complications. In this case; we report a pulmonary arterial hypertension patient applied to our clinic with progressive dyspnea and recent angina, after detection of LMCA ostial stenosis, the patient was treated with intravascular ultrasound-guided stent implantation. In the further follow-ups, the patient underwent the pulmonary endarterectomy operation due to the diagnosis of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension secondary to newly diagnosed primary antiphospholipid syndrome.

A Fatal Disaster: Accompanying Aortic Dissection Obscured by Acute Coronary Syndrome.

The present study investigated the characteristics of rare but often fatal cases of acute coronary syndrome and aortic dissection and the factors affecting mortality. HEART score, aortic dissection detection risk score, and Global Registry of Acute Coronary Event (GRACE) Score were calculated by evaluating biochemical tests and symptoms/signs of the 20 patients who were admitted to our clinic with a preliminary diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction and subsequently diagnosed with aortic dissection. The assumption of normal distribution was checked with the Shapiro-Wilk test, and independent group comparisons were made with the t test or the Mann-Whitney U test. Relationships between qualitative variables were analyzed with chi-square tests. Relationships between quantitative variables were analyzed with Pearson or Spearman correlation coefficients. Patients with conditions like hypertension and diabetes are at higher risk for aortic dissection. We recommend the use of the GRACE Score with the risk parameters we have determined for the prediction of operative mortality. We suggest that the axillary region and antegrade cerebral perfusion may be preferred as the cannulation area in dissection repair. We emphasize preliminary risk assessment according to the aortic dissection detection risk score and remind physicians that ECG ST-T and troponin changes may be misleading.