OBJECTIVE To evaluate cardiac function using echocardiography in patients with stroke admitted to subacute rehabilitation units. DESIGN Retrospective, cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS A total of 750 consecutive patients with stroke who were admitted to a suburban rehabilitation hospital. Mean age 67.5 years (standard deviation (SD) 12.3 years). Mean time since stroke 36.7 days (SD 13.2 d...

The aim of the study was to compare the clinical effects of carvedilol and trimetazidine for the treatment of alcoholic cardiomyopathy. A total of 60 patients diagnosed with alcoholic cardiomyopathy were enrolled in the study. The patients were randomly divided into the carvedilol (n=20), trimetazidine (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. The patients in the control, carvedilol and trimetazidine g...

82 Objectives. The latest development in echocardiography is the hand-held ultrasound device. Previous studies have shown that portable ultrasound devices detect major cardiovascular pathology better than the physical examination, but their diagnostic accuracy is still not known. The purpose of this study was to compare the results of examinations made with portable devices to those obtained wi...

The age and sex of the patients and their presenting symptoms are shown in table 1. Two of the patients, cases 3 and 6, had a family history suggesting that the disease was familial. A murmur had been present before the age of 5 years in case 6, while the remainder of the patients had become aware of the presence of a heart murmur after age 12. Symptoms were moderate to severe in all patients e...

A 69 year old female with a history of gastric bypass surgery with a recent revision (12 weeks prior to presentation) was admitted from a skilled nursing facility with subacute progressive dyspnea, cough and pleuritic chest pain. On initial assessment her blood pressure was 150/80 mmHg, pulse of 130 beats per minute, with a respiratory rate of 30 per minute and oxygen saturation of 85%. She had...

Anesthetic management of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a challenge to the anesthesiologist, due to poor left systolic function, ventricular enlargement, risk of malignant arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Therefore, preoperative assessment and appropriate anesthetic management are important in patients with DCM. This review describes the preoperative evaluation and anesthesi...

OBJECTIVES The latest development in echocardiography is the hand-held ultrasound device. Previous studies have shown that portable ultrasound devices detect major cardiovascular pathology better than the physical examination, but their diagnostic accuracy is still not known. The purpose of this study was to compare the results of examinations made with portable devices to those obtained with h...

BACKGROUND Active myocarditis is characterized by large heterogeneity of clinical presentation and evolution. This study describes the characteristics and the long-term evolution of a large sample of patients with biopsy-proven active myocarditis, looking for accessible and valid early predictors of long-term prognosis. METHODS AND RESULTS From 1981 to 2009, 82 patients with biopsy-proven act...

The age and sex of the patients and their presenting symptoms are shown in table 1. Two of the patients, cases 3 and 6, had a family history suggesting that the disease was familial. A murmur had been present before the age of 5 years in case 6, while the remainder of the patients had become aware of the presence of a heart murmur after age 12. Symptoms were moderate to severe in all patients e...