Sesamoiditis secondary to gout is an extremely rare condition with few case reports in the literature. It is an important differential diagnosis because the treatment depends on targeted therapy, unlike the main causes of sesamoiditis that often involves immobilization with special orthoses and prescription of anti-inflammatory drugs. We report here a case of a 38-year-old male, athlete, with bipartite medial sesamoid, who had insidious pain in the base of the left hallux. Laboratory tests showed no alterations, and imaging examinations demonstrated sesamoiditis with suspicion of stress fracture. The patient was initially prescribed an immobilization boot and analgesic and anti-inflammatory drugs, but he did not respond to the measures taken. After the onset of the same condition in the contralateral foot and getting the same imaging findings, we began an investigation of systemic disease, focusing on gout, because of a positive family history, which was confirmed by dual-energy computed tomography.

Introduction. Cystatin C has been used in the critical care setting to evaluate renal function. Nevertheless, it has also been found to correlate with mortality, but it is not clear whether this association is due to acute kidney injury (AKI) or to other mechanism. Objective. To evaluate whether serum cystatin C at intensive care unit (ICU) entry predicts AKI and mortality in elderly patients. Materials and Methods. It was a prospective study of ICU elderly patients without AKI at admission. We evaluated 400 patients based on normality for serum cystatin C at ICU entry, of whom 234 (58%) were selected and 45 (19%) developed AKI. Results. We observed that higher serum levels of cystatin C did not predict AKI (1.05 ± 0.48 versus 0.94 ± 0.36 mg/L; P = 0.1). However, it was an independent predictor of mortality, H.R. = 6.16 (95% CI 1.46–26.00; P = 0.01), in contrast with AKI, which was not associated with death. In the ROC curves, cystatin C also provided a moderate and significant area (0.67; P = 0.03) compared to AKI (0.47; P = 0.6) to detect death. Conclusion. We demonstrated that higher cystatin C levels are an independent predictor of mortality in ICU elderly patients and may be used as a marker of poor prognosis.

The prevalence of resistant hypertension in the general population is around 8.9%-11.7%, 1-3 and factors related to its development include obesity, advanced age, obstructive sleep apnea, left ventricular hypertrophy, excessive consumption of salt and alcohol, black race, diabetes mellitus (DM), female sex, chronic kidney disease (CKD), and high blood pressure (BP) in the first evaluation. 4-8 The multicenter study ReHOT (Resistant Hypertension Optimal Treatment), which evaluated 1597 individuals between 2010 and 2014, showed a prevalence of resistant hypertension of 11.7% and demonstrated that DM, previous history of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and BP ≥ 180/110 mm Hg at the beginning of follow-up were independent predictor of its occurrence. 3 Resistant hypertensive patients have a worse cardiovascular prognosis compared to other hypertensive groups, and Daugherty et al 9 determined risk of death, acute coronary syndrome, CVA, CKD, and heart failure to be 1.47 times higher in this population.

Right coronary artery aneurysms are rare and may result from severe coronary disease, with few cases described in the literature. Mortality is high, and therapy is still controversial. We report the case of a 72-year-old woman with arterial hypertension, and a family history of coronary artery disease, who evolved for 2 months with episodes of palpitations and dyspnea on moderate exertion. During the evaluation, a giant aneurysm was found in the proximal third of the right coronary artery. The patient underwent surgical treatment with grafting of the radial artery to the right coronary artery and ligation of the aneurysmal sac, with good clinical course.

The prevalence of cerebrovascular complications after cardiac catheterization is low. These include stroke, transient ischemic attack, and amaurosis fugax. Cortical blindness is a rare, bilateral clinical condition of largely ischemic etiology, characterized by damage to the cerebral cortex, which manifests with acute reduction of visual acuity. Usually, neuro-ophthalmic complications of cardiac catheterization are correlated with embolic phenomena or migraine. We report a case of transient cortical blindness during coronary and aortocoronary bypass graft angiography.