Brief myocardial ischemia of less than 20 min duration, followed by reperfusion, is known to cause transient contractile dysfunction, often termed myocardial stunning. Tagged magnetic resonance imaging offers a noninvasive method that can be used to quantify this regional mechanical dysfunction in stunned myocardium. To this end, a closed-chest canine model of myocardial stunning was created by...

Τransradial artery access has recently gained widespread acceptance as the preferred approach for coronary angiography and interventions, due to its lower incidence of bleeding vascular complications compared transfemoral access. However, thrombotic occlusion radial emerged most common complication this method, impeding use in future creation arteriovenous fistulae hemodialysis patients, or a g...

BACKGROUND A brief coronary occlusion before a more prolonged occlusion results in less myocardial infarction than the longer occlusion alone. However, the effects of this preconditioning on recovery of systolic function after coronary occlusion have not been determined. METHODS AND RESULTS Ultrasonic crystals implanted in rabbit myocardium measured segment length in the distribution of a bra...

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is rare and usually affects younger women in the peripartum period. Here, we report an interesting case of a 34-year-old woman with spontaneous coronary artery dissection that occurred 1 month after childbirth. Emergency coronary angiography showed stenosis of the left anterior descending artery, but immediately afterwards, a new occlusion of the right cor...

Coronary artery perforation is an uncommon complication in patients with coronary heart disease undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention. However, pericardial tamponade following coronary artery perforation may be lethal, and prompt treatment is crucial in managing such patients. Balloon occlusion and the reversal of anticoagulant activity are the common methods used to prevent cardiac tam...

The effects of two types of repeated transient coronary artery occlusions on collateral development were examined in chronically instrumented, conscious dogs. A 2-minute coronary occlusion at 32-minute intervals (group 1, n = 11) or a 15-second occlusion at 4-minute intervals (group 2, n = 7) were repeated day and night without interruption. In both groups, the total duration of coronary occlus...

The purpose of our study was to investigate whether loss of myocardial contraction immediately after coronary occlusion was nonuniform, and if pretreatment with carvedilol, a vasodilating nonselective beta-adrenoceptor antagonist, could retard loss of contraction after coronary artery occlusion. Feline hearts were subjected to acute regional ischemia by total occlusion of the left anterior desc...

OBJECTIVES We evaluated whether ultrasound improves myocardial tissue perfusion in 14 animals with coronary artery occlusion. BACKGROUND A recent study demonstrated that low-frequency ultrasound improves tissue perfusion in the rabbit ischemic limb, but there are no data on ultrasound enhancement of myocardial perfusion. METHODS Fourteen animals (9 dogs, 5 pigs) underwent thoracotomy and oc...