BACKGROUND Excessive weight and obesity (EwO) are independent factors in the development of heart failure; they lead to a state of myocardiopathy via inflammatory and hormonal mechanisms. If excessively accumulated, epicardial fat favors a proinflammatory state. Ventricular asynchrony is a marker of heart failure progression and has been poorly studied in EwO. The objective was evaluate the rel...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a progressive disorder that increases with age. Obesity is an important risk factor for AF. Pericardial fat is an active adipose tissue in close proximity to the heart and has been shown to be a risk factor for structural as well as coronary artery disease independent of body mass index. Recent studies suggest a role of epicardial fat in atrial remodeling as well as ...

Introduction Metabolic syndrome is related to multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Visceral obesity seems to play a key role in the development of all features of metabolic syndrome. Hence, the detection of visceral adipose tissue, fat deposited around the internal organs, might be important for the risk stratification of metabolic syndrome. Several methods are applied as surrogates for estima...

Automatic segmentation of particular heart parts plays an important role in recognition tasks, which is utilized for diagnosis and treatment. One particularly important application is segmentation of epicardial fat (surrounds the heart), which is shown by various studies to indicate risk level for developing various cardiovascular diseases as well as to predict progression of certain diseases. ...

BACKGROUND Ectopic accumulation of fat accompanies visceral obesity with detrimental effects. Lipid oversupply to cardiomyocytes leads to cardiac steatosis, and in animal studies lipotoxicity has been associated with impaired left ventricular (LV) function. In humans, studies have yielded inconclusive results. The aim of the study was to evaluate the role of epicardial, pericardial and myocardi...

In this work we present a technique to automatically or semi-automatically quantify the epicardial fat in noncontrasted Computed Tomography (CT) images. In CT images, the epicardial fat is very close to the pericardial fat, distincted only by the pericardium. The pericardium appears in the image as a very thin line, very hard to discriminate. To enhance the pericardium line and to remove noise ...

BACKGROUND Animal models suggest that the neurotransmitter inhibitor, botulinum toxin, when injected into the epicardial fat pads can suppress atrial fibrillation inducibility. The aim of this prospective randomized double-blind study was to compare the efficacy and safety of botulinum toxin injection into epicardial fat pads for preventing atrial tachyarrhythmias. METHODS AND RESULTS Patient...

BACKGROUND Percutaneous epicardial ablation of ventricular arrhythmias arising from the left ventricular summit is limited by the presence of major coronary vessels and epicardial fat. We report the outcomes of percutaneous epicardial mapping and ablation of ventricular arrhythmias arising from the left ventricular summit and the ECG features associated with successful ablation. METHODS AND R...