BackgroundProlongation of ventricular depolarization time (QRS duration), particularly in left bundle branch block (LBBB), is commonly associated with many cardiac diseases. We posit that the QRS duration and degree of left-axis deviation (LAD) identify significant left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction in patients with LBBB. MethodsIn this prospective study, 150 patients with diagnosis of ...

Apart from support of heart rate in patients of symptomatic bradycardia, in the last two decades, the indications of pacemakers have widened to prevent arrhythmias, optimise hemodynamic functions and suppress tachyarrhythmias. Pacemakers have been successfully used in Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy (HOCM) to reduce LVOT gradient and in improving cardiac output in patients of dilated ca...

This paper follows our earlier publication [1], where we introduced the idea of tuned data mining which draws on parallel resources to improve model accuracy rather than the usual focus on speed-up. In this paper we present a more in-depth analysis of the concept of Widened Data Mining, which aims at reducing the impact of greedy heuristics by exploring more than just one suitable solution at e...

We show two strategies which may be easily applied to standard abstract interpretation-based static analyzers. They consist in 1) restricting the scope of widening, and 2) intertwining the computation of ascending and descending chains. Using these optimizations it is possible to improve the precision of the analysis, without any change to the abstract domains.

The abstract domain of polyhedra is sufficiently expressive to be deployed in verification. One consequence of the richness of this domain is that long, possibly infinite, sequences of polyhedra can arise in the analysis of loops. Widening and narrowing have been proposed to infer a single polyhedron that summarises such a sequence of polyhedra. Motivated by precision losses encountered in veri...

A group of epithelial cells in the thymus guard against autoimmunity by presenting self-antigens to developing T cells—those T cells that take the bait are then killed. On page 1267, Rossi et al. identify the signaling pathway that creates this epithelial barrier and the cells that activate this pathway. Self-reactive T cells are eliminated when they latch on to selfantigens presented by a smal...

Some codes require computations to use fewer bits of precision than are normal for the target machine. For example, Java requires 32-bit arithmetic even on a 64-bit target. To run narrow codes on a wide target machine, we present a widening transformation. Almost every narrow operation can be widened by signor zero-extending the operands and using a target-machine instruction at its natural wid...

THE TERM "peri-infarction block" was suggested by First, Bayley, and Bedford1 in 1950 to describe a type of intraventricular conduction defect that develops following myocardial infarction. They described alteration in the direction of the early portion of the QRS complex (initial QRS forces) that produced definite manifestations of myocardial infarction (i.e., Q waves) and slurring and prolong...

BACKGROUND Loperamide is an over-the-counter, inexpensive, antidiarrheal opioid that can produce life-threatening toxicity at high concentrations. CASE REPORT 1: A 28-year-old man with a history of depression and substance abuse disorder (SUD) presented to the emergency department (ED) with shortness of breath and lightheadedness. He ingested large amounts of loperamide daily. The patient's ini...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Heart failure (HF) patients display more varied QRS duration. We investigated whether QRS variability during hospitalization for acute decompensated HF is associated with poor clinical outcomes after discharge. SUBJECTS AND METHODS One hundred seventy three patients (64% males; age 60±13 years) admitted for acute decompensated HF with severe left ventricular (LV) dys...