Cardiac imaging—advancing and challenging

Challenging Cardiac Electrophysiology

is now increasingly recognized by genetic screening. Association studies have identified numerous genes that are coupled to cardiac diseases, but the functional role of mutations in these genes is often not clear. The relations between the electrophysiological changes in patients with hereditary or chronic cardiac diseases is often far from clear. This calls for an integrated type of research, ...

Cardiac amyloidosis: a challenging diagnosis

Cardiovascular involvement of amyloidosis is present in 90% of cases, which is frequently associated with the primary form of the disease (AL amyloidosis). Clinical manifestations are represented by heart failure due to restrictive myocardiopathy and electrical impulse conduction abnormalities, which are clinically remarkable in up to 50% of the cases. The prognosis of patients with systemic am...

Challenging quantal calcium signaling in cardiac myocytes

Local calcium release via RYRs, observed in the form of calcium sparks (Cheng et al., 1993), is generally accepted to be a principal mediator of calcium homeostasis and excitation–contraction coupling in cardiac myo-cytes. However, investigation of local calcium release signals is extremely difficult because these signals are near the spatial and temporal resolution of modern in-strumentation. ...

Nutrition and Food Sciences: Fascinating and Challenging

Renal insufficiency after cardiac surgery: a challenging clinical problem.

Acute renal insufficiency (ARI) after cardiac surgery is a complex and frequent clinical problem. It increases shortand long-term mortality, the incidence of post-operative complications such as respiratory infections, sepsis, and gastrointestinal bleeding, and intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital lengths of stay. Identified risk factors for post-operative ARI in cardiac surgical patients inc...