Atrial fibrillation (AF) and heart failure (HF) are 2 burdensome chronic cardiac diseases with an increasing prevalence as the average life expectancy increases. HF can lead to atrial remodeling, which increases the risk of developing AF. Conversely, AF can lead to HF because of the consequences of the arrhythmia itself and impairment in diastolic filling. It has been estimated that ≤40% of pat...

Whilst resting disturbances of both diastolic and long-axis systolic function are observed in patients with heart failure who have normal left ventricular ejection fraction, recent evidence suggests that dynamic disturbances in cardiac function occur during exercise. A paradoxical slowing of left ventricular active relaxation during exercise limits cardiac filling and therefore stroke volume an...

BACKGROUND.: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is characterized by asymmetric LV hypertrophy (LVH) and impairment in diastolic function. We assess the relationship between LVH and invasive indexes of diastolic function. METHODS.: 21 HCM patients underwent cardiac catheterization to assess pulmonary capillary wedge pressure, LV end-diastolic pressure (measured by microtip catheters), and LV vol...

Lacombe VA, Viatchenko-Karpinski S, Terentyev D, Sridhar A, Emani S, Bonagura JD, Feldman DS, Györke S, Carnes CA. Mechanisms of impaired calcium handling underlying subclinical diastolic dysfunction in diabetes. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 293: R1787–R1797, 2007. First published August 29, 2007; doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00059.2007.—Isolated diastolic dysfunction is found in almost half o...

recent studies have documented the importance of lipids and lipoproteins as determinants of serum total homocysteine concentrations in persons with myocardial infarction, and in healthy subjects. associations between various biological systems and total homocysteine have also been reported. however, some of these associations are poorly understood. the purpose of our study was to measure serum ...

normal. Therefore, the high RI could not be explained by intrarenal abnormalities, pointing to an extrarenal cause. One such cause could be stiffness of the pre-renal arterial vessels. Our patient had suffered from coronary heart disease, insufficiency of the aortic valve and an aneurysm of the ascending aorta. Therefore, 7 years before transplantation, she had undergone to aerotocoronary bypas...