ALCAPA (anomalous left coronary artery from pulmonary artery) syndrome is a rare congenital abnormality that involves an anomalous insertion of the left coronary artery into the pulmonary artery. Ninety percent of patients present in the first year of life with signs and symptoms of heart failure or sudden cardiac death secondary to chronic myocardial ischemia. There have been an increasing number of reports of ALCAPA patients surviving to adulthood. There seems, however, to be a tendency to die suddenly in the third decade of life. Adult survivors are either asymptomatic or present with mitral regurgitation, cardiomyopathy, myocardial ischemia, or malignant arrhythmias. The management of the older patient presenting with symptoms resulting from ischemia and progressive left ventricular dysfunction remains a challenge. Treatment is largely based on guidelines for adult congenital heart disease management and an extrapolation of evidence from heart failure practice. Currently, surgical reimplantation of the anomalous coronary onto the aorta is the mainstay of treatment. The management of heart failure, sudden cardiac death, and ventricular arrhythmia present problems that are not addressed by reimplantation of the anomalous vessel alone. In this report, we present two cases with different modes of presentation and discuss treatment options.

In patients with end-stage renal failure on dialysis NT-pro-BNP provides greater prognostic information compared with TnT and TnI.

Troponin is a highly sensitive biomarker of myocardial injury and has been used extensively in everyday clinical practice in the community as well as in hospitals for the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and for risk stratification of patients with acute coronary symptoms. Dynamic elevations in biomarkers (troponin) are considered fundamental to the diagnosis of AMI. Unfortunately, many clinical conditions can cause troponin elevation in the absence of myocardial ischaemia, and elevated levels sometimes pose a diagnostic dilemma. In some cases, inappropriate diagnosis of 'AMI' based primarily on a raised troponin can have a deleterious impact on an individual, including on driving, insurance and other medicolegal matters.An incorrect diagnosis of myocardial infarction can also lead to the oversight of serious life-threatening alternative causes of troponin elevation (e.g. pulmonary embolism). This article discusses the role of troponin in our everyday clinical practice in the ED.

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