Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is an important tool for diagnosis and follow-up of patients with congenital heart disease (CHD). Appropriate use of TTE can reduce the need for more invasive and complex modalities, such as cardiac catheterization and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. New echocardiographic techniques have emerged for the assessment of ventricular systolic and diastolic fu...

An infant male presented with the rare anatomy consisting of situs solitus, concordant atrioventricular connections to L-looped ventricles, double outlet right ventricle (DORV), and hypoplastic aortic arch. 6 months after neonatal arch repair, morphologic function deteriorated, surgical evaluation was undertaken determine if either biventricular repair a systemic left or ventricular exclusion p...

A 76-yr-old man with unipolar ventricular pacemaker, previously implanted in the right ventricular apex, presented with syncopal attack and twitching of the right pectoralis muscle. He finally was diagnosed as having Twiddler's syndrome. The patient had a pulse rate of 36/min and cannon waves in the neck veins. Chest radiography showed a dislodged pacing lead completely wrapped around the pulse...

A 64-year-old man with a large cavitating squamous cell carcinoma (636 cm) in the right lower lobe of the lung was referred for prelobectomy cardiac assessment because of incidental finding of Q waves in leads II, III, and aVF on the ECG. Physical examination revealed an ejection systolic murmur at the left sternal edge. Cardiac size was normal on chest radiograph. A transthoracic echocardiogra...

Introduction: The correlation between right and left ventricular ejection fractions (RVEF and LVEF, respectively) has been studied in only a small number of patients with a marked decrease in RVEF and LVEF. The aim of the present study was to compare LVEF and RVEF in patients with ischemic heart disease. RVEF and LVEF were measured by Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) imaging. Materials a...

In spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), the progression (or absence of regression) of cardiac hypertrophy despite adequate blood pressure (BP) control by arterial vasodilators has been attributed to increased cardiac sympathetic activity. We evaluated changes in indices of general and cardiac sympathetic tone in relation to changes in cardiac anatomy during treatment of normotensive rats and ...

Intensive study of the infundibulum in congenital and acquired lesions has led to a much better appreciation of the anatomy and function of the right ventricular outflow tract in health and disease. The rapidly spreading practice of replacing severely damaged aortic and mitral valves, together with current interest in subaortic stenosis (Braunwald et al., 1964) have focused attention on the out...

During the last decade tissue Doppler and myocardial deformation imaging has been introduced to quantify myocardial function in patients with congenital heart disease. These methods could have potential benefits for patients where the anatomy makes it difficult to quantify ventricular function using M-mode or two-dimensional volumetric techniques. In this overview, the potential benefits as wel...

The feasibility of resynchronizing ventricular activation by permanent pacing of the His bundle region has been previously described, and has clinical advantages over traditional right ventricular (RV) apical pacing.1–4 The physiologic benefit of permanent His bundle pacing (HBP) is the ability to stimulate the ventricles through the intrinsic His-Purkinje system, which results in synchronous e...