Cardiovascular Pathology最新文献

Introduction: Heart transplantations are lifesaving for patients with end-stage heart failure. It is pertinent for the multi-disciplinary care team to understand how heart transplant patients succumbed to death and the complications that occurred. In this study, we performed a comprehensive retrospective review of all the autopsies performed in our institute for heart transplant patients and report the trend of demographic data, cause of death, and autopsy findings.

Materials and methods: Reports, photos, and slides of autopsies performed at our institute from 1990-2023 for heart transplant patients were reviewed. Pertinent demographic data (age, gender, pre-transplant diagnosis), clinical data (clinical history of rejection, complication, time interval from transplant to death, clinical cause of death) and pathological findings (allograft pathology, infectious etiology, other findings related to cause of death) were reviewed, documented, and analyzed.

Results: We identified 88 cases, consisting of 53 male and 35 female patients. The median age at transplant was 26 years, while 28.5 years was the median age at death. The median interval from transplant to death was 10 months. The cases were classified in three categories based on length of survival post-transplant: Superacute (<1 month, 21%), Early (1 month-12 months, 30%), and Late (>12 months, 49%). Slides were unavailable for review in 15 cases, which were excluded from cause of death (COD) evaluation. We categorized 41.1% of cases as allograft-related COD and 58.9% as non-allograft-related COD. Six of the CODs were not perceived premortem. These unexpected CODs included moderate/severe acute cellular rejection in a patient with a recently negative biopsy, dehiscent suture caused by a fungal abscess, an aorto-bronchial fistula, CMV myocarditis, acute abdominal bleeding, and ruptured atherosclerotic plaques with acute myocardial infarction.

Conclusion: We systematically reviewed thirty-three years of heart transplant autopsies. We found that 41.1% of deaths were allograft related, with infection being the most frequent COD. While the rate of unexpected findings was low, the findings demonstrate the continued utility of autopsy in patient evaluation.

Coronary artery vasculitis is a rare pathological condition and is often a manifestation of systemic vasculitis, such as Polyarteritis Nodosa, Kawasaki Disease, Takayasu Arteritis, and Giant Cell Arteritis, with Kawasaki Disease being the most common cause in children. We present the autopsy case of a 6-year-old boy with classic Hodgkin lymphoma who died of sudden cardiac death due to thrombosis caused by vasculitis, which exclusively affected the coronary arteries and was suggestive of Kawasaki Disease. To further investigate the histological features of Kawasaki Disease across all age groups, we conducted a literature review using the search terms "Kawasaki AND vasculitis AND histopathology" and "Kawasaki vasculitis histopathology" in Scopus, Google Scholar, and PubMed, covering the period from 1967 to 2023. The inclusion criteria were as follows: coronary histology (inflammation and/or aneurysm and/or thrombosis), post-mortem studies, English language, free articles, all age groups, case reports, and case series.

Background: This study investigates the impact of different harvesting techniques on the morphology and endothelial function of the left internal mammary artery (LIMA) grafts in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).

Methods: Fifty-three patients undergoing elective CABG were randomly assigned to two groups based on the harvesting technique: traditional clipping and non-clipping. Histological analyses revealed that arteries in the non-clipped group exhibited greater dilation and preserved endothelial integrity compared to the control group.

Results: The non-clipped group exhibited greater arterial dilation and preserved endothelial integrity compared to the clipped group. Immunostaining for endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) showed significantly higher expression in the non-clipped group, conversly COX-2 staining showed fewer expression in the non-clipped group indicating better endothelial function preservation.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that maintaining perfusion during LIMA harvesting may improve endothelial function and potentially enhance graft patency in the long term. Further research is warranted to validate these results and optimize harvesting techniques for CABG procedures.