background: cardiac dysfunction due to chronic anemia and hemosiderosis are the major causes of death among patients with thalassemia intermedia. this study was performed to compare the cardiac function in thalassemia intermedia patients with normal subjects by means of echocardiography. materials and methods: this was a case-control study performed on 22 patients affected by thalassemia interm...

BACKGROUND Growth hormone (GH) treatment may improve morphological and functional cardiac parameters in adults with GH deficiency (GHD). However, clinical trials reported to date involved few patients and yielded variable effects. METHODS AND RESULTS We systematically reviewed blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials of GH treatment in adults with GHD and open studies in patien...

The aim of present study was to investigate whether food restriction combined with exercise training could attenuate the oxidative stress and promote angiogenesis in a rat model of heart failure. 50 male wistar rats weighing 250-300 g were randomly divided into 5 groups including: 1) sham; they were fed ad libitum food, n=10. 2) Heart failure group; 3) Exercise group; they run on a treadmill 5 ...

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is one of the main causes of heart failure and could increase death, hospitalization, and rehospitalization rate. The effect of conventional medicine treatment (CMT) is limited; meanwhile, the combination of CMT and Oral Chinese Herbal Medicine (OCHM) represents exciting adjunctive therapies. In this study, we ascertained the therapeutic effect of OCHM in combinatio...

OBJECTIVE More recently, evidence showed that the novel anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin- (IL-) 37 was expressed in the foam-like cells of atherosclerotic coronary and carotid artery plaques, suggesting that IL-37 is involved in atherosclerosis-related diseases. However, the plasma levels of IL-37 in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS, including unstable angina pectoris and acute ...

OBJECTIVE To relate QT parameters to infarct size and inducibility during electrophysiological studies. DESIGN Analysis of a prospective register. SETTING University hospital. PATIENTS 64 patients with coronary artery disease and documented life threatening ventricular arrhythmias. INTERVENTIONS Measurements of QT-max, QTc-max, and QT dispersion (QT-d) on a simultaneous 12 lead ECG (50 ...

OBJECTIVES We sought to identify the risk factors predicting the development of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) in patients with isolated congenital complete atrioventricular block (CCAVB). BACKGROUND Recently evidence has emerged that a subset of patients with CCAVB develop DCM. METHODS This was a retrospective study of 149 patients with CCAVB who had heart size and left ventricular (LV) func...

conclusions: left ventricular systolic heart failure, may result in inter and intra-atrial asynchrony even in clinically stable patients without significant pulmonary hypertension and diastolic dysfunction. results: in heart failure patients either inter or intra-atrial asynchrony were far more common in comparison with normal subjects (p=0.008 and p=0.007 respectively). patients and methods: t...

BACKGROUND We aimed to study left ventricular (LV) geometry assessed by length (LVWL), external diameter (LVEDD) and relative wall thickness (RWT) in relation to age, body size and gender in healthy individuals. METHODS 1266 individuals underwent echocardiography in the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT3), Norway. Septum thickness (IVS), posterior wall thickness (LVPWd) and end-diastolic inte...

Echocardiographic studies were performed in 86 patients with right ventricular volume overload. In 45 of these 86 patients, 58 echocardiograms were performed at different intervals in the postoperative period. For control purposes, 60 normal subjects and 18 patients with right ventricular pressure overload were also examined. The right ventricular end-diastolic dimension (RVED) and the left ven...