Abstract Introduction The notch ratio (NR) in the pulmonary flow predicts in-hospital mortality after endarterectomy (PEA) for chronic thrombotic hypertension (CTEPH). Purpose We studied whether echocardiographic parameter NR can also discriminate long term outcome. Methods All patients who underwent PEA between June 2002 and 2005 were studied. Clinical, hemodynamic variables assessed pre-opera...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most commonly encountered clinical arrhythmia and is associated with a substantial burden of morbidity (mainly thrombo-embolism) and mortality. Vitamin K antagonists such as warfarin are highly effective for the prevention of stroke and systemic embolism in patients with AF, but their use is hampered by multiple food and drug interactions, the need for routine co...

High incidence and mortality rate of pulmonary thromboembolism urge physicians to be aware of its occurrence and treatment. Pulmonary thromboembolism (PE) typically manifests itself with acute dyspnea and tachycardia and may occur along with deep vein thrombosis. However, syncope, chest pain and heart failure decompensation in previously stable patients might be another presenting signs and sym...

Chronic thrombo-embolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) develops in a subset of patients after acute embolism. In CTEPH, vascular resistance, which is initially elevated due to the obstructions larger arteries, further increased by microvascular remodeling. The afterload right ventricle (RV) leads RV dilation and hypertrophy. This remodeling predisposes arrhythmogenesis failure. Yet, mechanisms ...

Venous thrombo-embolism is a life threatening condition with often non specific presentation. The detection of massive pulmonary embolism in the intra and immediate post-operative period is not only difficult due to the variety of conditions with similar presentation, but the therapy for the same is complicated with concerns of surgical and intracranial bleeding precluding various options. We p...

A 70-year-old woman was hospitalized due to a 2-year history of dyspnoea and weight loss. A transthoracic echocardiogram showed a large ‘thrombus-like’ mass occupying the right ventricular outflow tract and the main pulmonary trunk (Panel A; see Supplementary material online, Movie S1). The Doppler study showed turbulent right ventricular outflow (see Supplementary material online, Movie S2). A...

OBJECTIVE Biventricular bypass (BVB) with autologous lung perfusion is an attractive concept to ameliorate systemic inflammatory response by eliminating the oxygenator from the extracorporeal circulation. The effect of biventricular bypass as compared to heart-lung bypass (HLB) on pulmonary function parameters was therefore studied in an experimental model. METHODS Heart-lung bypass using a m...

To assess the utility of the thrombo-elastogram in monitoring of aspirin therapy 25 healthy volunteers were selected and given low-dose aspirin therapy. Thrombo-elastography and platelet aggregometry were conducted at baseline and 1 week later. After 1 week of aspirin therapy, thrombo-elastogram data failed to demonstrate a significant change in the clotting profile. Platelet aggregometry ident...