conclusions endocarditis is an important disease with a high mortality rate if not treated appropriately. therefore, these patients need more attention. in echocardiography, vegetation and complications of ie such as abscess and paravalvular leakage can be detected. results we studied 35 patients, 45% male and 55% female with a mean age of 56.36 ± 12.44 years. fever (80%) and chills (65.7%) wer...

OBJECTIVES We designed and implemented a focused transthoracic echocardiography curriculum for critical care medicine fellows participating in 1- and 2-year training programs. We quantitatively evaluated their proficiency in focused transthoracic echocardiography. DESIGN Prospective study evaluating curriculum implementation and objective assessment of focused transthoracic echocardiography p...

Biopsies of thoracic lesions guidance. 22 of the 1 12 lesions were mediastinal and 83 were pleuroparenchymal. A large-bore 14-gauge Tru-cut needle was used in all patients. Adequate specimens for histologic examination were obtained in 98%. The overall accuracy was 91 % with 9% false negative and no false positive diagnoses. Despite the large size of the needle, the total number of complic...

OBJECTIVE To compare the value of current transthoracic echocardiographic systems and transoesophageal echocardiography for assessing left atrial appendage function and imaging thrombi. DESIGN Single blind prospective study. Patients were first investigated by transthoracic echocardiography and thereafter by a second investigator using transoesophageal echocardiography. The feasibility of ima...

To improve survival rates in patients undergoing surgical ablative procedures for malignant ventricular tachycardia (VT), a frequent practice is to implant epicardial patch electrodes at the time of map-guided surgery. After operation, patients with inducible VT often receive an automatic internal cardioverter/defibrillator (AICD) implant, whereas patients with noninducible VT usually do not. I...