Descending thoracic aortic aneurysm in rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract

In this issue the MONICA (monitoring trends and determinants in cardiovascular disease) team from Toulouse reports on myocardial infarction trends in south west France between 1985 and 1993. 1 There were 3263 events in men and there appeared to be an annual decrease of around 2% in both event rate and mortality rates. Twenty eight day case fatality fell by about 3% per year for first events and by 6% for recurrent events. The confidence intervals, however, are very wide around these estimates. The authors have concluded that the decrease in myocardial infarction mortality was predominantly attributable to reduction in case fatality and, by inference, improvements in acute management. It should be noted that there were few events in women.

Consensus statement on surgical pathology of the aorta from the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology and the Association for European Cardiovascular Pathology: I. Inflammatory diseases

“…An autopsy study identified 10 cases of rheumatoid aortitis from among 188 consecutive autopsy cases of rheumatoid arthritis [73]. A small number of rheumatoid aortitis cases have also been identified in surgically resected aortic segments [49,54,74]. Either the thoracic or abdominal aorta may be involved, and the inflammation may be present in all layers of the aorta or be limited to the media.…”

Global economic burden of schizophrenia: letter in response

“…However, we acknowledge this limitation, therefore highlighting that there is a strong need for a guidance document in both conduct and reporting of economic burden studies in our review. In addition, we noted an error in our review and we would like to take this opportunity to correct it – we referred to Insel9 for the categorization of incarceration cost, instead of Modi et al (reference 27 in our original list) 10…”