BACKGROUND Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus are at risk of heart failure. Specific therapeutic interventions for diabetic heart disease are still elusive. We aimed to examine the impact of improved glycemic control on left ventricular (LV) function in these patients. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 105 subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus (aged 54±10 years) and poor glycemic control re...

BACKGROUNDS We aimed to evaluate the predictive power of longitudinal and circumferential fibers according to left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in successfully reperfused acute ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients. METHODS Total 691 patients (age 59±13, 20% female) underwent clinical evaluation and conventional and strain echocardiography (Global longitudinal strain (GL...

Background: This study aims to explore the extent to which the perceived oral conditions predict adolescent global life satisfaction (GLS); Methods: The sample in a cross-sectional survey consisted of 1510 Lithuanian adolescents (41.7% boys) aged 11-18. The survey was conducted by means of self-report questionnaires that were administrated in school classrooms ensuring confidentiality and anony...

Three methods of synthesizing correlations for meta-analytic structural equation modeling (SEM) under different degrees and mechanisms of missingness were compared for the estimation of correlation and SEM parameters and goodness-of-fit indices by using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. A revised generalized least squares (GLS) method for synthesizing correlations, weighted-covariance GLS (W-C...

Medical practice guidelines (GLs) being tools that are mainly designed to evaluate medical professionals, it sounds logical, and fair, that professionals should in turn evaluate GLs. Microbiology being a medical discipline, we used the AGREE instrument, i.e. an established evaluation tool for GLs, in order to evaluate the quality of two major microbiology guidelines, i.e. the SFM GLs and the AS...

BACKGROUND Both impaired left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (GLS) and increased plasma concentrations of natriuretic peptides(NP) are associated with a poor outcome in heart failure (HF). Increased levels of NP reflect increased wall stress of the LV. However, little is known about the relationship between LV GLS and NP. This aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship betw...

Background—Although global left ventricular systolic function is an important determinant of mortality, standard measures such as ejection fraction (EF) and wall motion score index (WMSI) have important technical limitations. The aim of this study was to compare global longitudinal speckle strain (GLS), an automated technique for measurement of long-axis function, with EF and WMSI for the predi...

BACKGROUND Left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (GLS) is a measure of the active shortening of the LV in the longitudinal direction, which can be assessed with speckle-tracking echocardiography. The aims of this evaluation were to validate the prognostic value of GLS as a new index of LV systolic function in a large cohort of patients with chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy and to dete...

BACKGROUND Predicting which individuals will have a decline in left ventricular (LV) function after pacemaker implantation remains an important challenge. We investigated whether LV global longitudinal strain (GLS), measured by 2D speckle tracking strain echocardiography, can identify patients at risk of pacing-induced left ventricular dysfunction (PIVD) or pacing-induced cardiomyopathy (PICMP)...

AIMS 2 dimensional (2D) strain analysis detects subclinical left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction. Our aim was to evaluate changes in LV systolic and diastolic function in breast cancer patients early after anthracycline chemotherapy, and to identify predisposing factors. METHODS AND RESULTS 140 patients were assessed by detailed echocardiography before and within seven days post treatme...