Left ventricular (LV) shape change during systole was characterized in nine patients with typical clinical findings of the systolic click syndrome (SCS) by means of cineangiographic measurements of three segmental diameters of the LV cavity and of the mitral valve ring (MVR) and contrasted with findings in eight patients with normal LV function. In the latter group, shortening of the proximal, ...

BACKGROUND Transmural myocardial contractile performance is nonuniform across the different layers of the left ventricular wall. We evaluated the accuracy of color M-mode tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) to assess the transmural distribution of myocardial velocities and to quantify the severity of dysfunction induced by acute ischemia and reperfusion in the inner and outer myocardial layers. METH...

Normal cardiac performance reflects the interdependence between myocardial mechanical function, myocardial oxygen consumption (MVO2), and blood flow. Indeed, physiologic processes directly associated with systolic function (e.g., wall stress, shortening, heart rate, contractility) are major determinants of MVO2. Conversely, when myocardial blood flow is interrupted, there is rapid cessation of ...

AIM To determine the correlation between insulin resistance and left ventricular systolic function in obese women. METHODS 44 obese (BMI > or =25 kg/m2) and 45 normal weight women were studied. They had no other pathological conditions. Echocardiograms were undertaken in our echocardiographic laboratory following standard methods. The homeostasis model was used to assess insulin resistance (H...

Background Cardiac MR (CMR) has emerged as the gold standard in assessing biventricular size and systolic function with segmented balanced steady-state free-precession (bSSFP) cine acquisitions. The application of a novel prototype iterative reconstruction technique to sparsely undersampled segmented bSSFP cine acquisitions may enable higher acceleration factors while shortening image acquisiti...

Despite advances in the molecular biology of cardiac myosin binding protein-C (cMyBP-C), little is understood about its precise role in muscle contraction, particularly in the intact heart. We tested the hypothesis that cMyBP-C is central to the time course and magnitude of left ventricular systolic elastance (chamber stiffening), and assessed mechanisms for this influence in intact hearts, tra...

Twelve healthy men were studied by M mode echocardiography during exercise to investigate the effect of afterload reduction on left ventricular function at maximal exertion. They performed two maximal exercise bicycle tests 4 hr apart while in the semisupine position and were given 20 mg nifedipine sublingually 30 min before the second test. During the first test end-systolic dimension decrease...

In the cardiac left ventricle during systole mechanical load of the myocardial fibers is distributed uniformly. A mechanism is proposed by which control of mechanical load is distributed over many individual control units acting in the environment of the cell. The mechanics of the equatorial region of the left ventricle was modeled by a thick-walled cylinder composed of 6-1500 shells of myocard...

To evaluate the alteration of myocardial contractility in hypertensive patients with different left ventricular geometric patterns by the end-systolic stress-midwall fractional shortening relation. Echocardiography was applied to study the left ventricular geometry and cardiac function among 117 cases of essential hypertension, with 45 normal cases as control(s). Left ventricular mass index (LV...

BACKGROUND Preterm birth has been associated with increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity in adult life. We evaluated whether preterm birth is associated with deviating cardiac structure and function before school start. METHODS AND RESULTS In total, 176 children aged 6 years and born extremely preterm (EXPT; gestational age of 22-26 weeks) and 134 children born at term (control [CTRL]) we...