BACKGROUND The relative contribution of the atrial septum and interatrial connections to biatrial activation is a fundamental concept of human cardiac electrophysiology that has yet to be fully characterized. The purpose of the present study was to determine how both atria are coupled electrically. METHODS AND RESULTS Twenty patients (16 men; mean age 54+/-11years) with a history of symptomat...

BACKGROUND The advent of 3D echocardiography has provided a technique which, potentially, could afford significant additional information over conventional cross-sectional echocardiography in the assessment of patients with straddling atrioventricular valves prior to surgical correction. METHODS Eight patients, aged from 1 month to 9.2 years, were examined with 3D echocardiography. All but th...

background: tubo-ovarian abscess as a serious complication of pelvic inflammatory disease is very uncommon in sexually inactive girls. case: we report a case of tubo-ovarian abscess in a 24-year-old sexually inactive girl with transverse vaginal septum who was presented with abdominal pain and a pelvic mass and without prior surgical history and no evidences of appendicitis, inflammatory bowel ...

The angiographic features of the left ventricle were examined in patients with idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis who had clinical and hemodynamic evidence of obstruction. Of 36 combined hemodynamic and angiographic studies considered to be technically satisfactory, 33 showed a characteristic combination of abnormalities. In the frontal projection in systole, a linear radiolucent area e...

Discrete subvalvar aortic stenosis (DSVAS) represents a unique cardiac lesion. As compared to most other congenital heart defects, DSVAS is virtually never recognized in early infancy, but appears to be an “acquired” lesion, albeit with anatomic precursors (1–4). The stenosis is caused by a fibrous ridge in the left ventricular (LV) outflow tract just proximal to the aortic valve. An abnormal a...

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is an important cause of cardiomyopathy in children and adolescents and is caused by mutations in the gene coding for the protein dystrophin [1]. Dystrophin participates in linking the sarcomere to the sarcolemma and extracellular matrix and plays a role in cell signalling [2]. The disease is characterised by skeletal and cardiac myopathies. Because it is inherited a...

Birds and mammals both developed high performance hearts from a heart that must have been reptile-like and the hearts of extant reptiles have an unmatched variability in design. Yet, studies on cardiac development in reptiles are largely old and further studies are much needed as reptiles are starting to become used in molecular studies. We studied the growth of cardiac compartments and changes...

Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is the most common congenital heart defect. Indicated closure is performed either by surgery or by using a transcatheter route in eligible patients (1). Although closure rates are similar in the transcatheter and surgical VSD closure, both the transcatheter closure of a VSD and surgery are not a complication-free procedure (2, 3). The occurrence of a complete atr...

BACKGROUND There is a paucity of information on structural organization of muscular bundles in the interatrial septum (IAS). The aim was to investigate histologic and ultrastructural organization of muscular bundles in human IAS, including fossa ovalis (FO) and flap valve. METHODS Macroscopic and light microscopy evaluations of IAS were performed from postmortem studies of 40 patients. Twenty...