introduction: previous studies have shown that various factors such as emotional stress can trigger of mi in susceptible persons. more studies are needed to evaluate the characteristics of patients regarding to emotional stress, heavy work, routine activity, infection or rest before occurrence of mi. methods: we studied 608 consecutive hospitalized in ccus from may 2000 to october 2001. for pat...

When chest symptoms recur in a patient who underwent percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), it is necessary to rule out restenosis (R). Three main noninvasive tests suggest the presence of R: exercise stress test (XT), myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) and stress echocardiography (s-echo). The objectives of this review were: (1) to estimate the pretest probability of R as a fun...

parallel computing is a topic of interest for a broad scientific community since it facilitates many time-consuming algorithms in different application domains.in this paper, we introduce a novel platform for parallel computing by using mpi and openmp programming languages based on set of networked pcs. umzhpc is a free linux-based parallel computing infrastructure that has been developed to cr...

STUDY DESIGN A finite-element study of posterior alone or anterior/posterior combined instrumentation following total spondylectomy and replacement with a titanium mesh cage used as an anterior strut. OBJECTIVES To compare the effect of posterior instrumentation versus anterior/posterior instrumentation on transmission of the stress to grafted bone inside a titanium mesh cage following total ...

PURPOSE Patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS) have potentially higher risk for cardiovascular events. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of MetS on cardiac events in type-2 diabetic patients asymptomatic for coronary artery disease (CAD) in a Japanese population. METHODS A total of 485 patients from a J-ACCESS-2 investigation with stress-gated myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI...

Abstract This paper develops a framework based on convex optimization and economic ideas to formulate and solve by an index policy the problem of optimal dynamic effort allocation to a generic discrete-state restless bandit (i.e. binary-action: work/rest) project, elucidating a host of issues raised by Whittle (1988) ́s seminal work on the topic. Our contributions include: (i) a unifying definit...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to determine the safety of dobutamine stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) obtained by real-time contrast echocardiography (RTCE) and intravenous ultrasound contrast in a large cohort of patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). BACKGROUND Despite the increasing number of studies showing the potential clinical utility of myocardial contra...

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main source(s): Swiss Science Foundation (SNSF). Background Whether myocardial inflammation causes long-term sequelae potentially affecting blood flow (MBF) is unknown. Objectives To assess the effect on quantitative MBF parameters, as assessed by 13N-ammonia positron emission tomography perfusion...

UNLABELLED In myocardial perfusion SPECT (MPS), ischemia is typically quantified as the difference between stress and rest defect sizes obtained by separate comparisons with stress and rest normal limits. Such an approach is not optimal because images are not compared directly with each other and a complex set of stress and rest normal limits is required. METHODS We developed a fully automati...

BACKGROUND The effect of beta blockers on myocardial blood flow (MBF) under vasodilators has been studied in several SPECT and PET myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) studies with divergent results. The present study evaluated the effect of a beta blocker withdrawal on quantitative adenosine MBF and on MPI results. METHODS Twenty patients with beta blockers and CAD history were studied with qu...