We sought to investigate the effects of the left internal mammary artery anastomosed to the left anterior descending artery for improving mid-term outcome in patients with severe left ventricular dysfunction. Twenty consecutive coronary artery bypass grafts performed by a single surgeon for less than 35% ejection fraction patients were reviewed retrospectively from April 2000 to November 2008. ...

BACKGROUND This historical cohort study evaluated the benefit of bilateral internal mammary artery (BIMA) grafts in coronary bypass grafting (CABG) for patients with diabetes. METHODS AND RESULTS We performed elective, isolated, primary, multiple CABG using skeletonized internal mammary artery (IMA) grafts for multivessel disease in 1131 patients, 467 (41.3%) of whom had type 2 diabetes melli...

A polysaccharide fraction, AIP1, purified from Artemisia iwayomogi was shown to have immunomodulating and anti-tumor activities in mice. In order to determine how the AIP1 fraction exhibits the immunomodulating activity, the effect of the fraction on the apoptosis of mouse spleen cells was investigated. Treatment of the mouse spleen cells with the AIP1 fraction resulted in the suppression of ap...

OBJECTIVES This study sought to assess the cost-effectiveness of captopril therapy for survivors of myocardial infarction. BACKGROUND The recent randomized, controlled Survival and Ventricular Enlargement (SAVE) trial showed that captopril therapy improves survival in survivors of myocardial infarction with an ejection fraction < or = 40%. The present ancillary study was designed to determine...

OBJECTIVES Our purpose was to evaluate the long-term benefit of myocardial viability assessment for stratifying risk and selecting patients with low ejection fraction for coronary artery bypass grafting and to determine the relation between the severity of anginal symptoms, the amount of ischemic myocardium, and clinical outcome. METHODS We studied 93 consecutive patients with severe coronary...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE To investigate whether single-fraction radiotherapy is equal to multiple fractions in the treatment of painful metastases. PATIENTS AND METHODS The study planned to recruit 1000 patients with painful bone metastases from four Norwegian and six Swedish hospitals. Patients were randomized to single-fraction (8 Gy x 1) or multiple-fraction (3 Gy x 10) radiotherapy. The pri...

Functional diffusion mapping (fDM) has shown promise as a sensitive imaging biomarker for predicting survival in initial studies consisting of a small number of patients, mixed tumor grades, and before routine use of anti-angiogenic therapy. The current study tested whether fDM performed before and after radiochemotherapy could predict progression-free and overall survival in 143 patients with ...

The aim of this study was to examine the applicability of the linear-quadratic (LQ) model to single and fractionated irradiation in EMT6 cells. First, the α/β ratio of the cells was determined from single-dose experiments, and a biologically effective dose (BED) for 20 Gy in 10 fractions (fr) was calculated. Fractional doses yielding the same BED were calculated for 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 7-, 15- ...

AIMS Heart failure (HF) and dementia frequently coexist, but little is known about their types, relationships to each other and prognosis. The aims were to (i) describe patients with HF and dementia, assess (ii) the proportion of specific dementia disorders in types of HF based on ejection fraction and (iii) the prognostic role of types of HF and dementia disorders. METHODS AND RESULTS The Sw...

The radioprotective activity of extracts from the red seaweed Callophyllis (C.) japonica was investigated in mice that underwent whole-body exposure to gamma radiation. A methanol extract of C. japonica and its fractions [hexane, ethyl acetate (EtOAc), butanol and the remaining H2O] were used. Each fraction (100 mg/kg body weight) was administered intraperitoneally (i.p.) 2 times into the BALB/...