The cardiac rate and rhythm were studied by 24-hour ambulatory electrocardiographic recording in 44 patients before, during, and after being discharged from hospital following an acute myocardial infarction. The first recordings were started 48 hours before discharge, the second on the morning of the day of discharge, and the third 48 hours after discharge (at home). While in hospital and after...

We extend a nonstandard asymptotic method proposed earlier, for calculation of conduction velocity restitution curves in ionic models of cardiac excitability. Conduction velocity restitution is the simplest nontrivial spatially extended problem in excitable media, and in the case of cardiac tissue it is an important tool for prediction of cardiac arrythmias and fibrillation. An idealized conduc...

Heart transplantation (HTx) is a well-established treatment for severe cardiac failure. However, HTx for cardiac sarcoidosis is rare; less than 80 patients have been reported worldwide. In many patients, the diagnosis was not made prior to HTx. The aim of this study was to describe the use of HTx in the treatment of severe cardiac sarcoidosis. The series was comprised of four Caucasian patients...

INTRODUCTION Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug worldwide. As societies reconsider the legal status of cannabis, policy makers and clinicians require sound knowledge of the acute and chronic effects of cannabis. This review focuses on the latter. METHODS A systematic review of Medline, PubMed, PsychInfo, and Google Scholar using the search terms "cannabis," "marijuana," "marihuana,...

© 2005 Society of Rural Physicians of Canada Can J Rural Med 2005; 10 (3) T he situation described is a challenge for a lone emergency department physician practising in a remote area. Although tricyclics are no longer the first-line treatment for depression, they are still commonly used to treat conditions such as chronic pain syndromes and fibromyalgia. Overdose from tricyclics is therefore l...

Ion channel disorders are rare inherited diseases providing interesting models to study dysfunction of excitability in vivo and in vitro. The first socalled ‘channelopathies’ identified were skeletal muscle diseases, the myotonias and hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HyperPP), which are sodium or chloride channel disorders. Within the last 5–10 years, complementary genetic and electrophysiologi...

Twenty-four-hour electrocardiographic tape-recording was used to investigate the incidence of arrhythmias in patients with suspected myocardial infarction who were receiving either propranolol, atenolol, or placebo. Recordings begun within 24 hours after admission to a coronary care unit showed that 76% of patients eventually found to have had a myocardial infarction had ventricular arrhythmias...

Cell transplantation for myocardial repair has emerged as a promising therapy for patients with heart failure. Recent in vitro and in vivo animal studies have suggested the potential of different cell types to differentiate into tissues required for cardiac repair namely endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes. In this review, we will focus on the potential of adult stem cells obtained from adult ...

Myxedema crisis is a severe life threatening form of decompensated hypothyroidism which is associated with a high mortality rate. Infections and discontinuation of thyroid supplements are the major precipitating factors while hypothermia may not play a major role in tropical countries. Low intracellular T3 leads to cardiogenic shock, respiratory depression, hypothermia and coma. Patients are id...

Heart disease is common in both humans and chimpanzees, manifesting typically as sudden cardiac arrest or progressive heart failure. Surprisingly, although chimpanzees are our closest evolutionary relatives, the major cause of heart disease is different in the two species. Histopathology data of affected chimpanzee hearts from two primate centers, and analysis of literature indicate that sudden...