OBJECTIVES Brief episodes of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion employed during reperfusion after a prolonged ischemic insult may attenuate the total ischemia-reperfusion injury. This phenomenon has been termed ischemic postconditioning. In the present study, we studied the possible effect of postconditioning on persistent reperfusion-induced ventricular fibrillation (VF) in the isolated rat heart...

OBJECTIVES To document patients' preoperative expectations for postoperative outcomes. To measure the relative contribution of patient understanding, expectations, outcome, and expectation-outcome discrepancy in determining patient satisfaction. METHODS One hundred twenty-one patients were surveyed just before and 1 month after cataract surgery regarding their understanding of the procedure, ...

Mountaintop mining and valley fill (MTM/VF) coal extraction, practiced in the Central Appalachian region, represents a dramatic landscape-scale disturbance. MTM operations remove as much as 300 m of rock, soil, and vegetation from ridge tops to access deep coal seams and much of this material is placed in adjacent headwater streams altering landcover, drainage network, and topography. In spite ...

BACKGROUND Sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) and fibrillation (VF) occur in up to 20% of patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) and have been associated with a poor prognosis. The relationships among the type of arrhythmia (VT versus VF or both), time of VT/VF occurrence, use of thrombolytic agents, and eventual outcome are unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS In the GUSTO-I study, we ex...

PURPOSE We used the Swedish interactive threshold algorithms (SITA) standard strategy of Humphrey perimetry, to analyze the pattern of visual field (VF) defects and evaluate the quantitative correlation between the tumor volume and severity of VF defects in patients with pituitary macroadenoma. METHODS We reviewed 50 patients with pituitary macroadenoma who received VF test and 11 patients we...

Introduction Patients with Brugada syndrome (BrS) are recognized as having a high risk for sudden cardiac death owing to ventricular fibrillation (VF). The electrocardiogram (ECG) pattern in BrS is dynamic and variable, and often the typical pattern is concealed. Multiple factors have been shown to influence ST-segment elevation in BrS patients and suspected cases of BrS. These factors include ...

PURPOSE To characterize visual field (VF) loss at the baseline visit and to evaluate VF quality control (QC) procedures in the Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Treatment Trial (IIHTT). METHODS The Visual Field Reading Center (VFRC) evaluated 660 baseline VFs (1320 hemifields) from 165 enrolled patients. Three readers independently classified each superior and inferior hemifield and identi...

The role of the cardiac sympathetic nerve activity in various cardiac diseases is typically evaluated using β-adrenergic receptor antagonists. However, these antagonists induce global denervation effects not only in the cardiovascular system, but also in the brain and kidney. The objective of this study was to detect the electrophysiological property changes due to 8 days of cardiac sympathetic...

OBJECTIVES This study mapped human ventricular fibrillation (VF) to define mechanistic differences between episodes requiring defibrillation versus those that spontaneously terminate. BACKGROUND VF is a leading cause of mortality; yet, episodes may also self-terminate. We hypothesized that the initial maintenance of human VF is dependent upon the formation and stability of VF rotors. METHOD...