Editorial: Thyrotoxicosis and the heart: Something old and something new

Cardiovascular manifestations of hyperthyroidism were prominent features of the very first cases of thyrotoxicosis described. Caleb Hillier Parry’s classic description of a woman whom he saw in 1786 with goiter and palpitations, whose “each systole shook the whole thorax, ” first suggested to himthe notion of some connexion between the malady of the heart and the bronchocoele (goiter) (1). Indeed, involvement of the cardiovascular system in hyperthyroid patients still provides some of the most common and conspicuous clues for clinical diagnosis: palpitations, atypical chest pain, tachycardia, systolic hypertension, a hyperdynamic point of maximal cardiac impulse, and cutaneous vasodilation.