BACKGROUND There have been few large-scale nationwide studies investigating both the prognosis and the prognostic factors of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC). A predictive score that can be used in clinical practice has not been established. METHODS AND RESULTS A nationwide epidemiological study of the prognosis of IDC was conducted in 1999 among randomly selected hospitals in Japan, a...

BACKGROUND Left ventricular remodeling, as commonly measured by left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), is associated with clinical outcomes. Although change in LVEF over time should reflect response to therapy and clinical course, serial measurement of LVEF is inconsistently performed in observational settings, and the incremental prognostic value of change in LVEF has not been well charact...

A local effect model (LEM)-based framework capable of interpolating nanoparticle-enhanced photon-irradiated clonogenic cell survival fraction measurements as a function of nanoparticle concentration was developed and experimentally benchmarked for gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-doped bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) under superficial kilovoltage X-ray irradiation. For three different superfici...

Squamous carcinoma of the head and neck: cured fraction and median survival time as functions of age, sex, histologic type, and node status Summary The multivariate lognormal survival model can be used to determine the relationship of prognostic covariates to two important parameters of malignancy. Cured fraction and median survival time among uncured patients. Analysis with this model revealed...

BACKGROUND Among patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) and preserved ejection fraction, those with low gradient (LG) and reduced stroke volume may have an adverse prognosis. We investigated the prognostic impact of stroke volume using the recently proposed flow-gradient classification. METHODS AND RESULTS We examined 1704 consecutive patients with severe AS (aortic valve area <1.0 cm(2)) ...

OBJECTIVE To determine long-term survival, identify preoperative factors predictive of a favorable outcome, and assess functional improvement after coronary artery bypass grafting in patients with advanced left ventricular dysfunction. METHODS Between 1995 and 2001, 244 patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting and had a preoperative left ventricular ejection fraction less than o...