background: echocardiographic evaluations of the longitudinal axis of the left ventricular (lv) function have been used in the diagnosis and assessment of heart failure with normal ejection fraction (hfnef). the evaluation of the global and segmental peak systolic longitudinal strains (pslss) by two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (ste) may correlate with conventional echocardiogr...

BACKGROUND Long-term ventricular resynchronization therapy improves symptom status. Changes in left ventricular remodeling have not been adequately evaluated. METHODS AND RESULTS Fifty-three patients with systolic heart failure and bundle-branch block underwent implantation of biventricular stimulation (BVS) devices as part of a randomized trial. Echocardiograms were acquired at randomization...

Noninvasive studies were performed in 12 male bicylists in the competitive season (CS) and in the resting season (RS) and in 12 matched control subjects to determine seasonal variations in cardiac structure and function in athletes and to compare the data with those of nonathletes. In athletes, peak oxygen uptake was 6% lower in the RS than the CS; the RS value was 40% higher than in nonathlete...

The response of the maximum value of the left ventricular pressure-volume ratio to preload augmentation by blood or plasma expanders was studied in 1 1 patients during the first 24 hr after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Increasing the mean left atrial pressure from 10 to 15 and 20 mm Hg resulted in no change in the maximum pressure-volume ratio in the group as a whole. In certain indivi...

BACKGROUND The metalloproteinase family of a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS) degrades extracellular matrix. However, the relevance of the ADAMTS family to cardiovascular diseases remains largely unknown. The study aimed to examine plasma ADAMTS-7 levels in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and the relationship between plasma ADAMTS-7 levels an...

Left ventricular systolic function does not correlate well with functional class in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. To determine whether the correlation is better with Doppler indexes of left ventricular diastolic function, 34 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (M-mode echocardiographic end-diastolic dimension greater than 60 mm, fractional shortening less than 25%, increased E point-se...

Acute pulmonary edema during hypertensive crisis has been attributed to acute left ventricular systolic failure secondary to increased afterload. We tested the hypothesis that the increase in coronary artery perfusion pressure associated with systemic hypertension could also contribute to increased left ventricular filling pressures by acutely increasing coronary intravascular volume and decrea...

This study was designed to evaluate the left ventricular systolic synchronization in patients implanted with dual-chamber DDD mode cardiac pacemakers by real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE). Twenty patients implanted with DDD mode cardiac pacemakers for 12 months and 20 healthy subjects underwent RT3DE. This method provided left ventricular end-diastolic volume (LEDV), left vent...

background: in certain conditions, there is a need for a specific and improved measure of cardiac performance.  routine methods for assessing left ventricular (lv) function are based on image-analysis or right heart monitoring which do not allow evaluation of ventriculo-arterial interaction. chen et al presented a noninvasive method allowing measurement of end-systolic pressure–volume relation ...