BACKGROUND We hypothesized that endothelial cell integrity in the risk area would influence left ventricular remodeling after acute myocardial infarction. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twenty patients (61 +/- 8 y.o.) with acute myocardial infarction underwent 99mTc-tetrofosmin imaging in the subacute phase and three months after successful primary angioplasty due to myocardial infarction. All patients...

An 80-year-old diabetic man with severe aortic stenosis was admitted to our hospital for cardiogenic shock complicating non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction. Echocardiographic evaluation showed also a severe degree of both left ventricular dysfunction and mitral regurgitation. The patient was initially stabilized with inotropes and mechanical ventilation was necessary because of concurrent pu...

Patients who have undergone angioplasty with stenting can be reintegrated into normal life at an early stage, thanks to the absence of sequelae associated with the procedure itself. Consequently, these patients can be involved earlier in the second stage of cardiac rehabilitation. Although rehabilitation for coronary patients follows the general guidelines used for all patients, which were deve...

BACKGROUND Diabetes mellitus has been recognized as a strong predictor of heart failure (HF) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). However, considerable controversy exists regarding the pathogenetic mechanisms of HF after AMI in diabetic patients. We hypothesized that the increased incidence of HF in diabetic patients was associated with a greater propensity for left ventricular (...

atrial fibrillation (af) is the most common arrhythmia after cardiothoracic surgery. af following coronary artery bypass graft (cabg) is associated with an increase in morbidity, mortality, hemodynamic instability, thromboembolic events, severity of heart failure and icu and hospital stay. corticosteroids have a variety of beneficial effects on recovery after elective surgery. this study was de...

BACKGROUND Limited data are available on the effect of anemia on mortality in patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI). METHODS We examined the association of anemia with mortality at 1 year among 30,341 patients hospitalized with acute MI in 1986 (prethrombolytic era, n = 15,584) and 1996 (thrombolytic era, n = 14,757). The records were obtained from the Myocardial Infarction Data Acqu...