background & objectives: cardiovascular effects of herbal medicine were shown in numerous studies. falcaria vulgaris or gazayag has traditionally been used in kermanshah as an herbal medicine and its beneficial effect on peptic ulcer and skin wound has been proved in previous studies. there is some evidence about its cardiac effect. in addition, special chemical substance called butylidenephtha...

echocardiography is a non-invasive diagnostic technique which provides information regarding cardiac function and hemodynamics. it is the most frequently used cardiovascular diagnostic test after electrocardiography and chest x-ray. however, in a patient with acute chest pain, transthoracic echocardiography is essential both for diagnosing acute coronary syndrome, zeroing on the evaluation of v...

The recent expansion of interventional cardiovascular techniques has stimulated the development of non-invasive cardiac studies, to evaluate the outcome of the interventional therapy. Radionuclide ventriculographic technique provides to quantify global left ventricular systolic/diastolic performance, and evaluate the regional left ventricular wall motion during rest or exercise. This concept wa...

The cardiac pacemaker controls the rhythmicity of heart contractions and can be substituted by a battery-operated device as a last resort. We created a genetically encoded, optically controlled pacemaker by expressing halorhodopsin and channelrhodopsin in zebrafish cardiomyocytes. Using patterned illumination in a selective plane illumination microscope, we located the pacemaker and simulated t...

OBJECTIVE The alterations in lung function caused by heart failure were first described some decades ago. The advent of new tools for the diagnosis and investigation of heart disease, such as echocardiography, has subsequently made it possible to classify cardiac dysfunction with greater precision. The objective of this study was to analyze and compare a series of lung function and gas exchange...

discussion transthoracic echocardiography disclosed massive pericardial effusion, respiratory variation in mitral and tricuspid inflow e velocity, increased diastolic flow reversal with expiration in the hepatic vein, septum deviation in inspiration toward the left ventricle (lv), preserved lv function, and inferior vena caval (ivc) dilation without any collapse in inspiration. chest computed t...

Nitric oxide (NO) is produced from virtually all cell types composing the myocardium and regulates cardiac function through both vascular-dependent and -independent effects. The former include regulation of coronary vessel tone, thrombogenicity, and proliferative and inflammatory properties as well as cellular cross-talk supporting angiogenesis. The latter comprise the direct effects of NO on s...

Nitric oxide (NO) participates in the control of contractility and heart rate, limits cardiac remodeling after an infarction and contributes to the protective effect of ischemic pre- and postconditioning. Low concentrations of NO, with production of small amounts of cGMP, inhibit phosphodiesterase III, thus preventing the hydrolysis of cAMP. The subsequent activation of a protein-kinase A cause...