BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to prospectively evaluate patients with suspected or known heart disease using plasma brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) measurement and radionuclide ventriculography to examine whether left ventricular dysfunction is associated with an abnormal rise of BNP concentration. METHODS Patients (n=153) and controls (n=14) underwent radionuclide ventriculography to d...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to assess the accuracy and feasibility of left ventricular systolic function determined by four-dimensional echocardiography (4DE). METHODS Latex balloons were sewn into the left ventricle (LV) of 20 freshly harvested pig hearts which were then passively driven by a pulsatile pump apparatus. Global longitudinal strain (GLS), global circumferential strain (G...

Few studies have investigated the relationship between left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and functional outcome in ischemic stroke patients. The purpose of this study was to determine if a low LVEF in ischemic stroke was associated with functional outcome. A cross-sectional study was performed on ischemic stroke patients admitted to a single academic stroke center from June 2008 to Dece...

background: the aim of this study was to echocardiographically assess the effects of eecp (enhanced external counterpulsation therapy) therapy on systolic and diastolic cardiac function. methods: lvef (left ventricular ejection fraction), esv (end-systolic volume), edv (end-diastolic volume), sm (myocardial systolic wave) , ea (myocardial early diastolic wave), vp (propagation velocity), e/ea (...

INTRODUCTION Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is a predictor of incident heart failure (HF). However, baseline LVEF is often unavailable in population studies of HF. METERIAL AND METHODS: Of the 5324 Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) participants free of baseline HF, 143 (3%) had LVEF < 45% and 1091 (21%) developed HF during 13 years of follow-up. Using public-use copies of the CHS da...

Abstract Background The imbalance of cardiac autonomic nervous system function plays an important role in heart failure associated mortality. ARNI has demonstrated a paramount effect reducing risk death and hospitalization for worsening failure. However, its exact mechanism action remains only partly understood. We sought to prospectively compare rate variability as noninvasive measure function...

AIMS The third isotype of beta adrenergic receptors (β3 ARs) has distinctly different effects on cardiomyocytes compared with β1 and β2 ARs. Stimulation of β3 ARs may reduce cardiomyocyte Na+ overload and reduce oxidative stress in heart failure (HF). We examined if treatment with the β3 AR agonist mirabegron increases LVEF in patients with HF. METHODS AND RESULTS In a double-blind trial we r...

UNLABELLED We evaluated whether dobutamine stress (99m)Tc-tetrofosmin quantitative gated SPECT (D-QGS) could predict improvement of cardiac function by carvedilol therapy in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). METHODS The study included 30 patients with idiopathic DCM and a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of <45%. D-QGS was performed in all patients to measure LVEF at rest a...

AIMS Abnormally low right ventricular ejection fraction (RVEF) is a predictor of poor outcomes in chronic heart failure (HF) patients with low left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). However, little is known about the relationship between LVEF and RVEF in these patients. METHODS AND RESULTS Of the 2707 Beta-blocker Evaluation of Survival Trial (BEST) participants with ambulatory chronic HF...