Catheter ablation is an evolving treatment option in patients with atrial fibrillation. Contrast enhanced electrocardiogram-gated multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) has rapidly evolved over the past few years into an important tool in the diagnosis of coronary atherosclerosis. There is increasing recognition that MDCT is a useful tool to evaluate non-coronary structures, such as cardiac ...

C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) is a hormone that shares structural homology to atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP); however, distinct receptors have been found for each in cultured aortic endothelial and smooth muscle cells. CNP in vivo reduces arterial pressure, atrial pressures, and cardiac output. These actions are consistent with a decrease in cardiac preload. Therefore, the current studies ...

It has been documented that the cardiac musculature of many mammalia, including man, extends from the heart along the pulmonary veins to the lungs, and, at least in some rodentia, as far as the small venules, and that smooth muscle is not present (1-3). However, these reports are of structural studies only, and in the one publication where a speculation is made concerning the spread of the cont...

Cases of drainage of the pulmonary veins into the right side of the heart have been well summarized by Brody (1942). He reported 38 cases of complete, and 68 cases of partial, drainage of the pulmonary veins into the right atrium or its tributaries. The purpose of this paper is to record a further case, and to summarize the cases not reported by Brody and those which have been reported during t...

Radio-frequency catheter ablation (RFCA) of the distal pulmonary veins and posterior left atrium is increasingly being used to treat recurrent or refractory atrial fibrillation that resists pharmacologic therapy or cardioversion. Successful RFCA of atrial fibrillation requires resolution of abnormal rhythms while minimizing complications and can be achieved with precise, preprocedural, three-di...

We studied the hemodynamic effects of surgically induced regional cardiac tamponade in anesthetized dogs. Tamponade restricted to either the right or the left ventricle was compared with tamponade of either ventricle and both atria. Intrapericardial pressures were elevated to approximately 20 mm Hg. With tamponade of the right ventricle alone, aortic pressure rose from 161 + 3.8 to 164 + 3.4 mm...

renal vein thrombosis (rvt) is the most frequent vascular abnormality in newborns, but rarely seen in adults. rvt is an acute problem, and diagnostic and therapeutic approaches should be done immediately. surgical thrombectomy is not a rational approach and the treatment of choice is conservative management and thrombolytic therapy. we present a 45 years old male patient with chronic renal vein...

BACKGROUND Placental insufficiency may lead to fetal cardiovascular compromise. We sought to determine whether ultrasonographic parameters of fetal cardiovascular function correlate with umbilical arterial levels of biochemical markers of myocardial dysfunction and damage in placental insufficiency. METHODS AND RESULTS In 48 fetuses with placental insufficiency, umbilical artery blood was obt...

trial fibrillation (AF) is classically proposed to result from ultiple wandering atrial wavelets (1,2). However, recent xperiments by Jalife et al. (3) have implicated an additional ole for single micro–re-entrant circuits within the left trium in AF. The pulmonary veins (PVs) are an important source of pontaneous electrical activity that initiates AF (4–6). Such ctivity may also manifest in is...