BACKGROUND Myocarditis can be difficult to diagnose in the Emergency Department (ED) due to the lack of classic symptoms and the wide variation in presentations. Poor cardiac contractility is a common finding in myocarditis and can be evaluated by bedside ultrasound. OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the utility of fractional shortening measurements as an estimation of left ventricular function during...

Background: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common inherited cardiac muscle disease with left ventricular hypertrophy, interstitial fibrosis and diastolic dysfunction. Increased myofilament Ca2+ sensitivity could be the underlying cause of diastolic dysfunction. Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCg), a catechin found in green tea, has been reported to decrease myofilament Ca2+ sensiti...

BACKGROUND Conventional echocardiographic technique for assessment of volume status and cardiac contractility utilizes left ventricular end-diastolic area (LVEDA) and fractional area of change (FAC), respectively. Our goal was to find a technically reliable yet faster technique to evaluate volume status and contractility by measuring left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD) and fractiona...

The effect of the ouabain-quinidine interaction was examined in 10 conscious dogs. Left ventricular (LV) pressure, LV dP/dt, LV diameter and left atrial (LA) diameter were measured with highfidelity micromanometers and sonomicrometer crystals. Ouabain, 0.025 mg/kg, significantly (p < 0.05) increased LV dP/dt, LV and LA fractional shortening and LV and LA velocity of circumferential fiber shorte...

The effect of the ouabain-quinidine interaction was examined in 10 conscious dogs. Left ventricular (LV) pressure, LV dP/dt, LV diameter and left atrial (LA) diameter were measured with high-fidelity micromanometers and sonomicrometer crystals. Ouabain, 0.025 mg/kg, significantly (p less than 0.05) increased LV dP/dt, LV and LA fractional shortening and LV and LA velocity of circumferential fib...

BackgroundIncreased metabolic rate of hyperglycemia in gestational diabetes causes macrosomia, which can also affect the fetal heart. The thickness of the walls of the heart and its function in women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) can change over time before treatment. We aimed to evaluate fetal cardiac structure in terms of ventricular wall thickness and its function in women w...

Background—The heart progressively remodels over the life course, yet longitudinal data characterizing such remodeling in the community are limited. Methods and Results—Using multilevel modeling, we analyzed up to 4 serial echocardiographic observations obtained over a 16-year period in 4062 Framingham Heart Study participants (mean age 45 years, 54% women; 11 485 person-observations). We relat...

BACKGROUND The heart progressively remodels over the life course, yet longitudinal data characterizing such remodeling in the community are limited. METHODS AND RESULTS Using multilevel modeling, we analyzed up to 4 serial echocardiographic observations obtained over a 16-year period in 4062 Framingham Heart Study participants (mean age 45 years, 54% women; 11 485 person-observations). We rel...

BACKGROUND Adenosine attenuates beta-adrenoceptor-mediated inotropic responses through GTP-binding protein in vitro. The goal of the present study was to test the hypothesis that endogenous adenosine released from the ischemic myocardium blunts the inotropic response to beta-adrenergic stimulation. METHODS AND RESULTS In 45 open-chest dogs, the left anterior descending coronary artery was per...