Systolic heart failure is a major problem for Americans today, with 550,000 new cases diagnosed per year, and ultimately contributes to 287,000 deaths annually. While pharmacologic therapy has drastically improved outcomes in patients with systolic heart failure, hospitalizations from systolic heart failure continue to increase and remain a major cost burden. In response to this unmet need, rec...

Although aortic regurgitation is a diastolic phenomenon, it has been observed during systole in a few cases. Our aims were to determine the incidence of systolic aortic regurgitation in routine clinical practice and to investigate the clinical profiles of patients with the condition. An exhaustive prospective study of all investigations performed by a hospital echocardiographic unit over one mo...

BACKGROUND Although the clinical significance of systolic-diastolic hypertension and isolated systolic hypertension has been established, the significance of isolated diastolic hypertension has not been fully investigated. OBJECTIVE To clarify the prognostic significance of isolated systolic and isolated diastolic hypertension as assessed by self-measurement of blood pressure (BP) at home (ho...

BACKGROUND Whether independent relationships between white coat effects (office minus day (office-day blood pressure (BP))) and organ damage or arterial stiffness may be explained by associations with an attenuated nocturnal BP dipping, has not been determined. METHODS In 750 participants from a sample of African ancestry, office and 24-hour BP, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) (appl...

OBJECTIVE Assessment of the accuracy of the A&D UM-101 mercury-free professional device for auscultatory blood pressure (BP) measurement according to the European Society of Hypertension International Protocol. Further to auscultation, the device has a button to mark readings during deflation. METHODS Fifteen adults were included in phase 1 and another 18 in phase 2. Simultaneous BP measureme...

In this paper, we introduce the Systolic Recon gurable Mesh (SRM), which combines aspects of the recon gurable mesh with that of systolic arrays. Every processor controls a local switch that can be recon gured during every clock cycle in order to control the physical connections between its four bi-directional bus lines. Data is input on one side of the systolic recon gurable mesh and output fr...

It is estimated that 30% to 50% of heart failure patients have preserved systolic left ventricular (LV) function, often referred to as diastolic heart failure (DHF). Mortality is high in this patient population, and morbidity and rate of hospitalization are similar to those of patients with systolic heart failure. The management of patients with diastolic heart failure is essentially empirical,...

T he incidence and prevalence of heart failure syndrome continue to increase, and it therefore remains a significant health problem in developed western countries. It is accompanied by high morbidity and mortality, and significantly affects the burden on health care system as well as the patients’ quality of life. Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) with biventricular stimulation has recent...

The increased survival after acute myocardial infarction induced an increase in heart failure with left ventricular systolic dysfunction. Early detection and treatment of asymptomatic left ventricular systolic dysfunction give the chance to improve outcomes and to reduce costs due to the management of patients with overt heart failure.

Background T1-mapping using the Shortened Modified Look-Locker Inversion Recovery (ShMOLLI) technique [1] enables assessment of myocardial characteristics, such as oedema, scar and diffuse fibrosis. However, cardiac pathology is often accompanied by tachyarrhythmia, which may cause mistriggering and inaccurate T1 estimation. We hypothesised that systolic T1-mapping may overcome this issue witho...