Background. Joint hypermobility syndrome/Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, hypermobility type (JHS/EDS-HT), is a hereditary connective tissue disorder mainly characterized by generalized joint hypermobility, skin texture abnormalities, and visceral and vascular dysfunctions, also comprising symptoms of autonomic dysfunction. This study aims to further evaluate cardiovascular autonomic involvement in JHS/...

In 14 consecutive patients with varying myocardial function, evaluation of the Valsalva maneuver was performed using aortic pulse pressure decay to investigate a possible quantitative relationship between the pattern of response and the degree of myocardial dysfunction. The aortic pulse pressure response during strain correlated with resting left ventricular end-diastolic pressure and pulmonary...

Lifting of a heavy weight may lead to "blackout" and occasionally also to cerebral hemorrhage, indicating pronounced consequences for the blood flow through the brain. We hypothesized that especially strenuous respiratory straining (a Valsalva-like maneuver) associated with intense static exercise would lead to a precipitous rise in mean arterial and central venous pressures and, in turn, influ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cardiac right-to-left shunts can be identified by transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) and by transcranial Doppler ultrasound (TCD) with the use of different contrast agents and different provocation procedures. Currently, data on an appropriate time window for the appearance of contrast bubbles in the TCD recording after the injection of the contrast medium and the com...

BACKGROUND Sinus of Valsalva-right ventricle fistula is a recognized but very rare complication after surgical repair of subaortic ventricular septal defect. Surgical repair with cardiopulmonary bypass and percutaneous transcatheter closure guided by x-ray has been the traditional treatment for fistula of sinus of Valsalva. CASE PRESENTATION Recently, we have used a novel approach, that avoid...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of the day-to-day variability of the measures of heart rate variability (HRV) on the sample size calculation for the study of cardiac autonomic neuropathy. MATERIAL AND METHODS We analyzed HRV in the frequency domain [very low (VLF), low (LF), and high frequency (HF) bands] and in the time domain [the root mean squared of s...

Sinus of Valsalva aneurysm is a rare cardiac anomaly with wide spectrum of clinical presentation ranging from asymptomatic state to dreadful complications due to compression of vital surrounding structures or aortic dissection. There are only few reported cases of sinus of Valsalva aneurysm presented with cardiac arrhythmias including complete heart block. We herein, present a case of a 50 year...