Hemochromatosis is a clinical syndrome caused by abnormal accumulation of iron in parenchymal organs leading to organ toxicity and dysfunction. Cardiac hemochromatosis is a cardiomyopathy due to primary iron-overload cardiomyopathy which causes congestive heart failure. Patients with cardiac hemochromatosis may be asymptomatic early in the disease. Once heart failure develops, there is rapid de...

Background Incidence of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is increasing and putting the emphases on comprehensive evaluation of diastolic function. Furthermore, diastolic dysfunction even in the absence of heart failure has been shown to have prognostic significance. American Society of Echocardiography and European Association of Echocardiography (ASE/EAE) 2-level decision tree us...

Correspondence to: Malissa J Wood, MD, Cardiac Ultrasound Laboratory VBK 508, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA; [email protected] _________________________ C ardiomyopathies and their resultant systolic and diastolic heart failure remain a major cause of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The prevalence of heart failure continues to increase and it r...

Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common disease which frequently results in life-threatening right ventricular (RV) failure. High-risk PE, presenting with hypotension, shock, RV dysfunction or right heart thrombus is associated with a high mortality, particularly during the first few hours. Accordingly, it is important to commence effective therapy as soon as possible. In the case described i...

BACKGROUND Diagnosing heart failure and left ventricular systolic dysfunction is difficult on clinical grounds alone. We sought to determine the accuracy of a heart failure register in a single primary care practice, and to examine the usefulness of b-type (or brain) natriuretic peptide (BNP) assay for this purpose. METHODS A register validation audit in a single general practice in the UK wa...

The CorInnova cardiac compression device (CorInnova, Inc., Houston, TX, USA) is designed to provide direct biventricular support, increase output, and improve ventricular unloading in patients with heart failure. Placed within the pericardium surrounding both ventricles, has two concentric sets of thin-film polyurethane chambers: (1) inner (epicardial) saline-filled chambers that conform intima...

introduction: hearing impairment is the most frequent sensorial congenital defect in newborns and has increased to 2–4 cases per 1,000 live births. sensory-neural hearing loss (snhl) accounts for more than 90% of all hearing loss. this disorder is associated with other congenital disorders such as renal, skeletal, ocular, and cardiac disorders. given that congenital heart diseases are life-thre...

Objective- The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of performing echocardiography in apparently healthy pigeons, and measurement of the quantitative cardiac indices using B-mode and Doppler techniques. Design- Experimental study Animals- Ten apparently healthy pigeons Procedures- Echocardi...

The recent increase in interest in echocardiography is partially due to the feasibility of using this technic to evaluate left ventricular performance in a noninvasive manner. It has been demonstrated that one can obtain an internal dimension of the left ventricular cavity and that this dimension is closely related to the corresponding volumes in uniformly contracting ventricles. Thus in patien...