In order to evaluate the relationship between regional myocardial perfusion and segmental dyskinesis, 22 open chest dogs were studied using ultrasound to register cardiac wall motion and radioactive labeled microspheres to determine myocardial perfusion. In six dogs, motion and perfusion were correlated at two levels of partial circumflex coronary artery occlusion followed by complete occlusion...

OBJECTIVE Velocity-encoded phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides a tool to quantify regional myocardial wall motion of the entire heart. It allows the acquisition of three-directional velocity vector fields with high spatial resolution that reflect the temporal evolution of myocardial velocities over the cardiac cycle. In contrast to other imaging modalities such as echocardi...

Background Prediction of ventricular arrhythmias (VA) after myocardial infarction remains challenging. There has been evidence that strain echocardiography can improve risk prediction. Patients with a high degree of contraction inhomogeneity are thought to be at increased risk of arrhythmic events. Mechanical dispersion may be due to inhomogeneous electrical activation and the resulting dyssync...

........................................................................................................................................... V Populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning ............................................................................. VII List of Papers ..............................................................................................................................

IN EXPERIMENTS oti the dog heart-lung preparation which led to the formulation of the well-known "Law of the Heart," Patterson, Piper and Starling observed that when cardiac work was augmented, ventricular volume sometimes increased in the face of a constant left ventricular end-diastolic pressure. These investigators concluded that the strength of myocardial contraction was a function of end-d...

Clinical trials in patients with pacemakers for sinus node dysfunction or atrioventricular block have highlighted the fact that desynchronization of ventricular contraction induced by right ventricular apical pacing is associated with long-term morbidity and mortality. These clinical data confirm pathophysiological results indicating that right ventricular apical pacing causes abnormal ventricu...

A cardiac cycle consists of systolic (contraction) and diastolic (relaxation and filling) phases that are linked closely together for optimal function of the heart. Normal diastolic function allows adequate filling of the heart without an excessive increase in diastolic filling pressure both in the resting state and with stress or exertion.1 The diastolic phase is remarkably well designed to en...