Cardiac extrinsic neuropathy: Lesions of the mediastinal paraganglia in chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy

The pathology of cardiac innervation, both intrinsic and external to the heart (mediastinal paraganglia included), is scarcely known, yet it can be critical to life-threatening disorders in cardiac performance or to reflexes discharging outside the heart, or both. This article focuses on such a fundamental and ill-understood subject through an anatomoclinical outlook of mediastinal paraganglia lesions in the setting of sudden death in chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy.