Background Hypertension is a modifiable risk factor for cognitive impairment, although the relationship between hypertension and impairment not fully understood. The objective of to clarify blood pressure decline in normal population through longitudinal follow-up study. Method Cognitively was selected from people who lived suburbs Xi’an, China.The mini-mental state examination (MMSE) neuropsyc...

Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) causes impairment of cardiac hemodynamics and substantial cardiovascular morbidity. While AF is difficult to assess with cardiac gated CMR, successful electrical cardioversion of chronic AF is often followed by a transient period of atrial stunning where absence of mechanical atrial contraction, similar to that seen in AF, persists despite reinstitution of si...

Preoperative and postoperative right heart catheterizations were performed on six patients with chronic constrictive pericarditis. Before surgery the patients characteristically showed distinct elevation of right ventricular end-diastolic, pulmonary arterial and wedge pressures. During the operation, right and left ventricular pressure curves were recorded both before and after pericardial rese...

In order to assess left ventricular function, measurements of left ventricular internal dimension and its rate of change have been made by echocardiography in 7 patients with myotonic dystrophy and the three children of one of them, who were clinically normal but had abnormal muscle biopsies. Electrocardiograms and systolic time intervals were also recorded in all. Only one patient had signs of...

BACKGROUND Small artery pathophysiology is frequently invoked as a cause of obesity-related diastolic heart failure. However, evidence to support this hypothesis is scant, particularly in humans. METHODS AND RESULTS To address this, we studied human small artery structure and function in obesity and looked for correlations between vascular parameters and diastolic function. Seventeen obese pa...

We studied the effects of vigorous rowing training on left ventricular structure and function using M-mode, two-dimensional and Doppler echocardiography in 10 female college rowers. Echocardiographic measurements were performed before and after 20 weeks of rowing training. Diastolic function was also estimated by measuring the isovolumetric relaxation time (IRT), deceleration time (DcT), peak v...

We investigated the utility of strain, strain rate, and tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) for the evaluation of the right ventricle (RV) impairment in patients with a hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) who underwent a successful alcohol septal ablation (ASA) and were without RV hypertrophy. A group of 19 patients suffering from HOCM with 22 controls was compared. The parameters of TDI we...

The left ventricular dimension and posterior wall dynamics were studied by computer assisted analysis of M mode echocardiography in 25 normal children (group 1) and 32 transfusion dependent children with beta thalassaemia major who had no evidence of heart failure (group 2). Twenty seven of those in group 2 remained well but five died of cardiac decompensation within 12 months. Compared with gr...

Background—Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients exhibit myocardial energetic impairment, but a causative role for this energy deficiency in the pathophysiology of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy remains unproven. We hypothesized that the metabolic modulator perhexiline would ameliorate myocardial energy deficiency and thereby improve diastolic function and exercise capacity. Methods and Results—For...

BACKGROUND Magnetic resonance spectroscopy can quantify myocardial triglyceride content in type 2 diabetic patients. Its relation to alterations in left (LV) and right (RV) ventricular myocardial functions is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 42 men with type 2 diabetes mellitus were recruited. Exclusion criteria included hemoglobin A(1c) >8.5, known cardiovascular disease, diabetes-rel...