During a meeting of cardiologists in Prague earlier this year to exchange experiences with new methods and treatments to control atrial fibrillation, Dr Josef Kautzner, Head of Cardiology Department at IKEM (Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine) pointed out that numbers of patients with AF will more than double during the next 20 years.
An increased TWA (T-wave alternans) is a significant indicator of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, as well as of sudden cardiac death in patients with mostly normal ejection fraction, according to a recently published study by researchers led by Dr Tuomo Nieminen.
Cardiac infarction and cardiovascular failure are two of today's most frequent emergencies. SCHILLER's FRED® easyport® pocket is the only pocket defibrillator in the world.
Boston Scientific Corporation has commenced enrolment of a targeted 1,500 patients for the Taxus Perseus clinical trials, planned to take place in 100 international centres.
The Lifebridge B2T (bridge-to-transport) is the first, fully portable emergency life support system for patients suffering cardiogenic shock, or those showing signs of imminent cardiogenic shock.
Progenitor cell transfer to repair the damaged heart has emerged as an innovative and promising recent development in cardiovascular medicine.
Cardiac infarction is characterised by tissue ischaemia with loss of contractile heart muscle.
Switzerland - A clinical trial of cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) in patients with advanced heart failure and a narrow QRS complex
A new blood pressure (BP) measuring device that provides, along with all the conventional cardiovascular parameters, the cardiac stroke volume, peripheral resistance and arterial augmentation, has been developed at the Austrian Research Centre (ARC), Vienna-Seibersdorf. The result of seven years' work by researchers, the device, named CardioMon, is now ready for sale.
Cardiac CT angiography (CTA) performed after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery can reveal a high prevalence of unsuspected cardiac and significant non-cardiac findings that might otherwise be overlooked, according to a study by researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Centre, Baltimore ('Cardiac CT Angiography after Coronary Bypass Surgery: Prevalence of Incidental Findings', Pub:…
Elderly people lose their physical reserves and are thus more susceptible to diseases. Very often not only one but several organs are affected. Consequently, prophylactic measures such as control of body weight to determine the patient's nutritional status become crucial.
A decision by Ab Klink, Minister of Public Health, Wellbeing and Sports, to increase the number of balloon angioplasty facilities in hospitals to 30, has prompted the NVVC - the Dutch cardiologists association - to express concern that there will be too many centres and too few patients, and specialists will not be able to maintain the level of skills for this procedure.
Ongoing refinement of modern helical multi-slice CT (MSCT) scanners offers the opportunity for very high temporal and spatial resolution thin-slice data set acquisition. The reconstruction techniques offered (multisegment reconstruction) result in improved temporal resolution down to 40-200 ms and thus also reducing motion artifacts. The SURECardio software package makes possible optimum studies…
The aortocoronary bypass is an important surgical method for multivessel coronary revascularization, especially in the presence of complex lesions and in diabetic patients. It is can improve the prognosis of patients with three vessel disease and with left ventricular dysfunction1 . With regard to the type of graft used, bypasses are split into venous and arterial types. The use of venous…
Coronary stenting is the most common way of treating symptomatic ischaemic cardiopathy and stenosis of venous bypasses. Restenosis actually occurs in 30% of patients treated with non-medicated stents while "drug eluting" stents have reduced the incidence of restenosis by approximately a quarter and have proved particularly effective in diabetic patients and in the treatment of lesions…
Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) is an emergingnon-invasive ultrasound technique that makes it possible to measure velocities at any point of the ventricular wall during the cardiac cycle. Over the last ten years, TDI has been proposed as a feasible and useful imaging tool that provides information on regional wall motion dynamics.
The evaluation of the size and function of the left ventricle in patients with suspected heart disease is a central diagnostic problem. In contrast to other methods of evaluating left-ventricular function (e.g., angiocardiography, right-sided heart catheterization, radionuclide ventriculography or MRI), transthoracic echocardiography is a widespread and readily available procedure that is not…
Along with a high local resolution, the cardiac CT imaging also requires a high time resolution where the image data acquisition must be synchronised with the cardiac cycle by means of parallel ECG recording, and the measuring volume must be acquired in a single breathhold cycle. The multi-slice CT copes well with these requirements as it allows for acquiring continuous volume data sets of the…
Impairment of left ventricular relaxation may lead to pulmonary congestion and symptoms of heart failure even in patients with preserved systolic function. Doppler echocardiography has become the non-invasive method of choice for the assessment of both systolic and diastolic dysfunction. However, Doppler-derived parameters such as mitral inflow velocity, deceleration time and isovolumic…
It has long been known that remaining at high altitudes leads to an increase in pulmonary arterial pressure caused by hypoxia. Its effects on cardiac function have also been considered well documented. The increase in pressure in the pulmonary circulation causes an enlargement of the right ventricle and thereby causes a displacement of the left ventricle that is accompanied by a relaxation…
Further developments in computer and detection technology over the last few months and years have made it possible to overcome, to a large degree, the previously limitations of medical computer tomography in spatial and temporal resolution, and thus to permit “detail-true” representation of the beating heart. The diagnostic workflow and computer-tomographic diagnosis of the heart using the…
Because of the rapid technical and scientific development over the past few years, multislice computer tomography of the heart has become increasingly established in the clinical routine. This requires, among other things, knowledge of the anatomy of the coronary arteries, the meaningful evaluation of the calcium score and the appropriate reproduction of the function of the left ventricle.
In the last 10 years, small animal models have played an important role in cardiological research. These research models are especially important since today various cardiac illness entities can be investigated in transgene animal models. Because of the animals ease of handling and fast generation time, research projects with rats and mice are particularly interesting. Until the 1980s,…
Arteriosclerosis is well known as a vascular disease and cardiovascular risk factor. In its generalised form it affects not only the peripheral vessels (pelvis, legs) but also the coronary vessels and the carotid arteries. Arteriosclerosis is primarily a manifestation of advancing age, hence it is often accompanied by other diseases of the lungs and the heart as well as by metabolic diseases…
Ultrasound contrast agents (USCA) or echo enhancers consist of minute gas containing microbubbles that have a high reflectivity when exposed to an ultrasound field. The history of USCA started in the mid of the 1960s. The cardiologist Joyner performed echo cardiography during the injection of saline solution into the aortic root via a catheter. During the injection he observed bright signals on…
