Paragangliomas are rare neuroendocrine tumors that arise from the extra-adrenal autonomic paraganglia, i.e., small organs consisting mainly of neuroendocrine cells that are derived from the embryonic neural crest and have the ability to secrete catecholamines. Paragangliomas can derive from either parasympathetic or sympathetic paraganglia. Most of the parasympathetic ganglia-derived paragangliomas are nonfunctional, and symptoms result from mass effect. Conversely, the sympathetic paragangliomas are functional and produce catecholamine. Although such patients could have symptoms similar to pheochromocytoma, mass effect symptoms, or non-specific symptoms, being benign tumors, they can also present with anemia, specifically iron-deficiency anemia. Considering that neoplastic pathology is chronically accompanied by moderate, normochromic, normocytic anemia, association between paragangliomas that are mostly benign but with a potential degree of malignancy and anemia is not as frequent as expected, with only 12 cases reported in the literature. We report a case of a 54-year-old female patient diagnosed with a paraganglioma of the carotid glomus accompanied by severe normochromic, normocytic anemia, which reached normal limits after excision of the paraganglioma.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and chronic heart failure (HF) frequently coexist, but renal dysfunction may not relate uniformly to symptom-based, biomarker, and echocardiographic measures. This retrospective single-center study evaluated 75 adults with CKD and pre-existing cardiologist-confirmed chronic HF, classified at baseline as eGFR G3b (n = 14), G4 (n = 48), or G5 (n = 13). NYHA functional class, NT-proBNP, and echocardiographic parameters were compared across eGFR G categories, and exploratory correlations with continuous eGFR were examined. NYHA functional class distribution differed across categories, with NYHA III–IV present in 14.3% of G3b, 20.8% of G4, and 61.5% of G5 patients. NT-proBNP and E/e′ also differed across categories, and eGFR correlated inversely with NT-proBNP (ρ = −0.251, p = 0.030) and E/e′ (ρ = −0.333, p = 0.003). In contrast, eGFR was not significantly correlated with ordinal NYHA class, LVEF, or PASP, while LVEF, PASP, LAVI, LVMI, and LVH did not differ significantly across eGFR categories. Given the small subgroup sizes, marked sex imbalance across eGFR categories, unadjusted analyses, and absence of correction for multiple comparisons, these findings should be considered descriptive and hypothesis-generating. They suggest partially concordant patterns across functional, biomarker, and echocardiographic domains rather than independent effects of renal function and support cautious multidomain interpretation in CKD–HF populations.