valvular heart disease is a considerable finding in the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (aps). the involvement of the mitral and aortic valves is more common in the form of leaflet thickening or aseptic verrucous vegetations called the libman-sacks endocarditis. in addition to the detrimental effects of endocarditis on the valves, it can lead to serious thromboembolic complications. here we ...

background: diabetes mellitus is capable of impairing the myocardial function. several studies have documented the influential impact of diabetes mellitus on the left ventricular function. the right ventricular function plays a significant role in the overall myocardial contractility; hence, this study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of diabetes mellitus type ii on the right ventricular f...

quadricuspid aortic valve (qav) is an uncommon congenital anomaly which was an incidental finding during surgery or autopsy in the past. we present the case of a 44-year-old woman with moderately severe aortic regurgitation due to unequal cusp size qav diagnosed via transesophageal echocardiography. due to echocardiographic imaging improvement, the diagnosis of qav is now easier and earlier tha...

background: we sought to assess right ventricular (rv) systolic and diastolic functions via tissue doppler imaging (tdi) in order to discriminate right-to-left (bidirectional) from left-to-right intracardiac shunts. methods: a tissue doppler velocity study via doppler echocardiography was performed in 20 patients with left-to-right shunt (without evidence of significant pulmonary hypertension) ...

background: conventional doppler measurements, including mitral inflow and pulmonary venous flow, are used to estimate left ventricular end diastolic pressure (lvedp). however, these parameters have limitations in predicting lvedp among patients with mitral regurgitation. this study sought to establish whether the correlation between measurements derived from tissue doppler echocardiography and...

background : the signal-averaged electrocardiography is a noninvasive method to evaluate the presence of the potentials generated by tissues activated later than their usual timing in the cardiac cycle. the purpose of this study was to demonstrate the correlation between the filtered qrs duration obtained via the signal-averaged electrocardiography and left ventricular dimensions and volumes an...

background: percutaneous balloon mitral valvotomy (bmv) is the gold standard treatment for rheumatic mitral stenosis (ms) in that it causes significant changes in mitral valve area (mva) and improves leaflet mobility. development of or increase in mitral regurgitation (mr) is common after bmv. this study evaluated mr severity and its changes after bmv in iranian patients. methods: w e prospecti...

anomalies of origin, course, and distribution of coronary arteries, including single coronary artery, are well known in patients with tetralogy of fallot. however, to the best of our knowledge, there is no published case report of pentalogy of fallot with a single coronary artery. herein, we introduce a 22-year-old female patient diagnosed via echocardiography and cardiac catheterization preope...

pulmonary thromboembolism (pte) has a wide spectrum of presentations, and its c ardinal manifestations include chest pain, dyspnea, and syncope. syncope as an initial presentation of pte occurs in 10-14% of patients and is not restricted to massive ptes. it can also occur in the setting of non- massive cases probably due to a vasovagal mechanism or the occurrence of conduction disturbances in p...