Atrial myxomas are the most common primary cardiac tumors to diagnose. They are benign and have variable presentation. They have an excellent prognosis following surgical excision. We report a case of a 60 year old female who presented with initial signs of both right and left heart failure, fever and cough. Auscultation of the heart revealed an apical mid diastolic murmur. Trans-thoracic and transesophageal echocardiography revealed a pedunculated, giant left atrial myxoma that prolapsed through the mitral valve into the left ventricle in diastole producing functional mitral valve stenosis. The patient underwent a successful surgical excision of the tumor. The diagnosis and management of atrial myxomas is here reviewed.

Infective endocarditis (IE); is an infectious disease which generally develops due to the involvement of cardiac valves, congenital cardiovascular lesions, prosthetic valves and other prosthetic materials by specific microorganisms during transient bacteremia. Despite developments in diagnosis and treatment, high mortality rates make it an important element of our current agenda. Embolic events are common and one of the life-threatening complications of IE; which may result in difficulty in diagnosis as they can imitate other pathological conditions [1,2]. In this report, we present a patient with double valve IE whose first diagnosis was ischemic stroke due to embolic complications of IE.

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of mortality throughout the world. The history of cardiovascular research is rich and although this study is not intended to be a review of the subject, a short summary related to the present work is necessary. Interested readers are invited to review articles such as [1-4]. These studies are representative of the literature which deal with the complexities of hemodynamics. Among the important subtopics are the relationship between the wall and the fluid. The fluid exerts a shear stress on the wall which is believed to be a causing of thickening of the wall and the initiation of cardiovascaular disease. The flow also has an impact on transport through the arterial wall [5-20].

Background: Autonomic nerve innervation pathway from the ventricular GP to the pulmonary veins (PV) remains unclear. Aim: This study investigates the autonomic innervations from aortic root ventricular GP to the PVs. Nissl’s staining and fluorescent dual label staining were performed to determine the neuron structure in the aortic root GP in five dogs. Avidin Biotin Complex (ABC) staining were performed to study the efferent autonomic pathway from the aortic root GP to the PVs. Results: Adrenergic and cholinergic neurons were both present in the aortic root GP, with the majorities were cholinergic. ABC positive nerve fibers that contained both cholinergic and adrenergic neurotransmitters penetrated directly from the aortic root GP to the left PVs.

Coronary artery aneurysm (CAA) is defined as abnormal dilatation of a coronary artery luminal diameter to 1.5 to 2 times wider than the adjacent normal segment. Giant coronary artery aneurysms are rare, with a reported prevalence of 0.02% to 0.2% [1]. Most of the giant coronary artery aneurysms are asymptomatic, but some patients present with angina pectoris, sudden death, fistula formation, pericardial tamponade, compression of surrounding structures, or congestive heart failure.