Pencho Kratunkov

St. Ekaterina Hospital · Pediatric Cardiology

Background Most of North and Western European countries recognized long ago the importance of specialized ACHD programmes and have today well-established Centre of excellence for management of ACHD patients. In contrast, even though Central and South-eastern (CESE) European region geographically comprise almost half of the European continent, littl...

Aims To examine the current status of care and needs of adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) services in the Central and South Eastern European (CESEE) region. Methods and results We obtained data regarding the national ACHD status for 19 CESEE countries from their ACHD representative based on an extensive survey for 2017 and/or 2018. Thirteen co...

Hereditary hemorrhagic teleangiectasia (HHT) is a genetic disorder, characterized by abnormal vessel formation and arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). The so-called "Curaçao criteria" are most commonly employed for the purposes of clinical diagnosis. However, children may not exhibit the full magnitude of symptoms and the Curaçao criteria appear to...

Atrial septal defects (ASD) are among the most commonly recognized congenital cardiac anomalies presenting in adulthood, characterized by a defect in the interatrial septum allowing blood from the left atrium to pass to the right atrium. In this article we present a clinical case of a 39-year-old female patient with uncorrected ASD secundum type, d...

Takayasu's arteritis is an inflammatory disease of unknown etiology characterized by granulomatous vasculitis affecting the aorta, its main branches and the pulmonary arteries. It occurs most often in women of child-bearing age. At the time of diagnosis 10% to 20% of patients with T? are clinically asymptomatic. The remaining 80% to 90% of patients...

Embolotherapy or embolization has rapidly developed in recent years and now represents an integral part of interventional radiology practice. Embolotherapy is defined as the percutaneous endovascular application of one or more of a variety of agents or materials to accomplish vascular occlusion. Embolization has grown dramatically in scope and comp...

The vasculitides are a heterogeneous group of diseases, characterized by inflammation of blood vessel walls, with subsequent tissue destruction and/or organ failure. A relationship between tuberculosis infection and different types of vasculitis - hypersensitivity vasculitis, Takayasu's arteritis, central nervous system vasculitis, erythema nodosum...

Visceral aneurysms (VA) which was once considered uncommonq are now being diagnosed whit increased frequency, a fact that reflects the routine use of noninvasive computed tomography angiography, magnetic resonance Imaging, and ultrasonography. This vessel pathology is characterized by a high mortality rate if ruptured. Prompt diagnosis and appropri...

To report a rare case of dissecting thoracic aortic aneurysm in a young patient with Turner syndrome owing to complete or partial monosomy of the X chromosome. A 22-year-old patient with Turner syndrome presented with a 2-month history of voice loss and dysphagia. Multislice computed tomography (MSCT) disclosed a large (53x75-mm) aneurysm with foca...

Development of improved devices for interventional closure of atrial septal defect and patent foramen ovale increased the number of adult patients who are being referred for transcatheter closure. We report two cases that were scheduled for patent foramen ovale closure because of a right-to-left atrial shunt detected at contrast transesophageal ech...

For a period of 13 months (from April 1993 till May 1994) 14 patients (5 men and 9 women) have been examined intraoperatively with transesophageal echocardiography. Nine of the patients were with mitral valve lesion, three of them with mitral valve lesion, complicated with tricuspidalisation, one patient with mitral-aortic valve lesion and high gra...