Background. Many asymptomatic patients with aortic regurgitation and normal left ventricular systolic function remain clinically stable for many years, but others ultimately develop symptoms or left ventricular dysfunction and require operation. To identify indexes of left ventricular function predictive of symptomatic and functional deterioration during the long-term course of asymptomatic pat...

BACKGROUND We assessed changes in left ventricular (LV) volume and function and in regional myocardial wall stress in noninfarcted segments after restrictive mitral annuloplasty (RMA) with or without surgical ventricular restoration (SVR). METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-nine patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy (ejection fraction ≤ 0.35) and severe mitral regurgitation (≥ 3) were studied before ...

The sodium-calcium exchanger (NCX) is discussed as one of the key proteins involved in heart failure. However, the causal role and the extent to which NCX contributes to contractile dysfunction during heart failure are poorly understood. NCX overexpression was induced by infection with an adenovirus coding for NCX, which coexpressed green fluorescence protein (GFP) (AdNCX) by ex vivo gene trans...

BACKGROUND In a previous study, we found that recovery of segment shortening in the ischemic zone of conscious, chronically instrumented rabbits was significantly better in ischemically preconditioned than control animals after 72 hours of reperfusion. However, although this period of reperfusion was felt to be sufficient to allow recovery from stunning, regional function was disproportionately...

OBJECTIVE To quantify regional three-dimensional (3D) motion and myocardial strain using magnetic resonance (MR) tissue tagging in patients with non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). METHODS MR grid tagged images were obtained in multiple short- and long-axis planes in thirteen DCM patients. Regional 3D displacements and strains were calculated with the aid of a finite element model. Fiv...

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of exercise training and L-arginine supplementation on oxidative stress and systolic ventricular function in rats with myocardial infarction (MI). Methods: Four weeks after the surgically-induced MI, 40 male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to the following 4 groups (n=10): MI-sedentary control (Sed) MI-exercise (Ex) MI-...

The cineangiograms of 26 normal subjects were analyzed to study the effect of Starling's mechanism on postextrasystolic potentiation. The end-diastolic volumes (single plane and biplane) of the left ventricle were similar in the regular sinus beat before an extrasystole and sequential sinus beats after an extrasystole. However, the ejection fraction, mean normalized systolic ejection rate, mean...

Right ventricular (RV) function is notoriously difficult to quantify. Patients with tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) have decreased systolic performance. We measure regional RV performance using MRI with 1-dimensional myocardial tissue tagging. By tagging cine-MRI in two views, we measured regional shortening in 12 regions throughout the RV. We image 32 pediatric patients: 21 normal patients and 11 pa...