The present study assessed the usefulness of brain natriuretic peptide in evaluating the cardiovascular status in children and grown-ups with congenital or acquired disease affected by chronic cardiac failure. Brain natriuretic peptide should be included in the risk stratification of children with dilated cardiomyopathy. In patients with congenital heart defects, it is useful to tailor the optimal medical strategy to individual patients.

Prematurity and low birth weight adds to the risk of serious congenital heart disease in infants. It may also delay surgical intervention, especially when cardiopulmonary bypass is required, or where an aortopulmonary shunt is necessary to maintain adequate oxygenation. In this setting, neonatologists are faced with the challenge of accelerating the infant's growth to allow for early surgery. We describe the cases of two infants in whom an attempt to fortify the feeds was associated with necrotising enterocolitis, with a lethal outcome in one. The outcome suggests caution in fortifying feeds in premature infants with serious congenital heart disease.

Neurofibromatosis is an autosomal dominant multi-system genetic disorder. Extra-cardiac vascular manifestations of neurofibromatosis have been previously described in many reports. However, coronary arterial involvements have been rarely described. A 17-year-old girl with neurofibromatosis presented to our institute with subacute myocardial infarction. Coronary angiogram revealed an aneurysm with thrombus in the left anterior descending artery.

Aorta–right atrial tunnel is a rare congenital defect. If it is not treated, critical complications can occur. Surgical closure is the treatment of choice, but with increasing experience in transcatheter techniques and the introduction of new occluder devices the percutaneous technique is now a successful modality for closure. In this paper, we report the case of a 3-year-old child with aorta–right atrial tunnel whose defect was closed with the vascular plug 4 device.

Isolated cardiac involvement in hydatid disease is very rare. We report the case of a young adult male who presented to the emergency department with acute onset of chest pain and was surprisingly detected to have a hydatid cyst in the left ventricular myocardium. The transthoracic echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging confirmed the diagnosis. Cardiac hydatid disease should be considered in the differential diagnosis of chest pain in young individuals in the absence of conventional risk factors of atherosclerosis.

Coronary artery compression is a rare and potentially fatal complication after percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation. We report on a case of an acute antero-septal non-ST myocardial infarction secondary to the partial laceration of the conduit and the creation of a thrombus giving an extrinsic compression of left anterior descendent coronary artery after Melody valve implantation.

Congenital absence of unilateral pulmonary artery, either as a primary defect or in combination with other congenital cardiovascular malformations, is very rare. Double outlet right ventricle pathology in combination with unilateral absence of pulmonary artery has only been reported once in the literature. In this report, we present our experience with double outlet right ventricle with unilateral absence of left pulmonary artery in a 3-year-old female patient who underwent a palliative procedure and was scheduled for correction.