BACKGROUND In beta-thalassemia major, heart failure primarily affecting left ventricular systolic function is the most common complication and cause of death. Apart from iron deposition, it has been recently reported that myocarditis might be another contributing factor in the pathogenesis of acute or chronic heart failure, acting possibly through an autoimmune mechanism. In an attempt to asses...

In recent years there has been important advancement in our knowledge of iron metabolism regulation that also has implications for understanding the physiopathology of some human disorders like beta-thalassemia and other iron overload diseases. In fact, progressive iron overload is the most salient and ultimately fatal complication of beta-thalassemia. Iron deposition occurs in visceral organs ...

cor triatriatum is defined as a membrane within the left atrium, which might lead to restricted pulmonary venous return. diagnosis is usually achieved by echocardiography in early infancy. therapy of choice is the excision of the membrane. herein, successful correction of cor triatriatum in a 4-year-old girl is presented, and the clinical features, echocardiographic findings, and the surgical t...

background: several echocardiographic markers have been introduced to assess the left ventricular (lv) mechanical dyssynchrony. we studied dyssynchrony markers and the latest lv activation site in heart failure patients with and without left bundle branch block (lbbb). methods: conventional echocardiography and tissue velocity imaging were performed for 78 patients (lv ejection fraction ≤ 35%),...

primary cardiac sarcomas are rare clinical entities with an incidence rate of 0.0001% in collected autopsy series and are regarded as very aggressive tumors. we herein describe a 21-year-old woman presenting with syncope, dyspnea, and abdominal distention. she suffered from massive ascites, plural effusion, and liver congestion demonstrated by abdominal sonography and chest x-ray. transthoracic...

background: given the dearth of data in the existing literature on the size and morphologic variability of secundum-type atrial-septal defect (asd-ii) in adult patients, we aimed to address this issue in a series of consecutive adult patients evaluated by transesophageal echocardiography (tee). methods: a total of 50 patients (68.0% female) with isolated asd-ii underwent tee for the evaluation ...

background: we compared the outcomes in patients with a low ejection fraction (ef) and multivessel coronary artery disease (cad) who either underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (cabg) or received medical treatment (mt) after a viability study via dobutamine stress echocardiography (dse). methods: we considered patients with cad and left ventricular ejection fraction (lvef) <40% who were re...

mitral valve regurgitation (mvr) is a common valvular disease in dogs. hydrokinetic evaluation of the blood flow within the ventricles has become possible by vector flow mapping (vfm), which shows the blood flow within the ventricles in vector and vortex flows. blood flow within the left ventricle of mvr dogs was compared at different stages of mvr and to that of normal dogs. 14 normal dogs and...

background and objective: congenital heart disease (chd) is the most form of cardiovascular disease in children. chd have different presentations, from defects that progress asymptomatically to those with significant symptoms and high mortality. this study was performed to highlight the importance of signs and symptoms to diagnosis of chd neonates. materials &amp; methods: this descriptive an...

conclusions ctr is the most common method of describing the heart size. increased ctr in cxr is associated with poor prognosis, which is suggestive of importance and necessity of early diagnosis. although cxr may not have the same diagnostic accuracy as echocardiography, its easy accessibility and high specificity in diagnosis of cardiomegaly is very helpful, which can play an important and a c...