BACKGROUND Rosacea is a chronic facial skin disease associated with excessive inflammatory response to various triggers. Although some studies have supported the increased risk of cardiovascular diseases in rosacea, it has not been completely accepted. OBJECTIVE We aimed to investigate epicardial fat thickness and carotid intima-media thickness as cardiovascular risk predictors in rosacea pat...

BACKGROUND Although adiposity is increasingly recognized as a risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF), the importance of epicardial fat compared with other adipose tissue depots remains uncertain. We sought to characterize and compare the associations of AF with epicardial fat and measures of abdominal and overall adiposity. METHODS AND RESULTS We conducted a meta-analysis of 63 observationa...

A tethered epicardial crawling robot known as HeartLander has been developed for minimally-invasive surgery on the beating heart. The crawler has been tested in vivo many times in a porcine model, a model which provides generally authentic conditions in many ways; however, the pigs tested generally have little epicardial fat, whereas the epicardial fat in human patients will be considerable. As...

INTRODUCTION Epicardial fat volume (EFV) has been reported to correlate with the severity of coronary artery disease (CAD). Pericardial fat volume (PFV) has recently been reported to be strongly associated with CAD severity and presence. We aimed to investigate the relationship between EFV and PFV with severity of coronary artery stenosis in patients undergoing 64-slice multi-slice computed tom...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common chronic diseases seen in the elderly, and it is associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The cause of this association is not fully known. We aimed to investigate the relationship between epicardial fat and the presence and the grade of primary knee OA for analyzing the relationship between visceral adiposity and primary OA,...

BACKGROUND & AIMS Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has been associated with increased cardiovascular risk, including coronary artery disease and cardiac dysfunction. In addition, recent evidence highlighted the possible role of epicardial fat as a new cardiometabolic risk factor. We tested the correlation between epicardial fat, alterations in cardiac geometry and function, and severit...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a complex metabolic disease, and cardiovascular disease is a leading complication of diabetes. Epicardial adipose tissue surrounding the heart displays biochemical, thermogenic, and cardioprotective properties. However, the metabolic cross-talk between epicardial fat and the myocardium is largely unknown. This study sought to understand epicardial adipose tissue meta...

INTRODUCTION Visceral fat has deleterious metabolic effects and has been associated with myocardial ischemia. OBJECTIVE To compare epicardial fat thickness in diabetic versus non-diabetic patients with acute myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation. MATERIAL AND METHODS We performed a cross-sectional study in 60 patients with acute myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation (30 ...

INTRODUCTION Epicardial adipose tissue is an ectopic fat storage at the heart surface in direct contact with the coronary arteries. It is considered a metabolically active tissue, being a local source of pro-inflammatory factors that contribute to the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease. The AIM of our study was to establish correlations between echocardiographic assessment of epicardial ad...

INTRODUCTION Inflammation contributes to cardiovascular disease and is exacerbated with increased adiposity, particularly omental adiposity; however, the role of epicardial fat is poorly understood. METHODS For these studies the expression of inflammatory markers was assessed in epicardial fat biopsies from coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) patients using quantitative RT-PCR. Further, th...