Changes in left ventricular systolic and diastolic function and outflow gradient were evaluated in patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy after intravenous acute treatment with verapamil (15 patients) and after six months of oral chronic treatment (11 patients). All patients had severe symptoms despite beta blockade, and the condition of all but two improved appreciably after chr...

TO THE EDITOR: I read with interest the Viewpoint article by Zhang et al. (5). The authors advocated dPLV (ventricular pressure)/dVLV (ventricular volume) 0 as the necessary and sufficient condition for definition of diastolic suction. This definition guarantees that suction manifests only when ESV (end-systolic volume) Veq [equilibrium volume (diastasis volume)] and naturally leads to the kine...

To clarify the mechanism of displacement of the left ventricular diastolic pressure-volume function with alteration of loading conditions, the effects of nitroglycerin on pressure-volume relations in 13 patients were compared with those of amyl nitrite in 13 other patients during cardiac catheterization. After nitroglycerin, average systemic mean arterial pressure declined by 15.1 mm Hg (17%) a...

  Introduction: We investigated the difference in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and end-systolic volume(ESV) measured by gated myocardial perfusion SPECT (GSPECT) in the post-dipyridamole stress and rest periods, and compared the results with the perfusion patterns found in the conventional non-gated tomograms. Methods: 297 consecutive patients were studie...

During mechanical ventilation, phasic changes in systemic venous return modulate right ventricular output but may also affect left ventricular function by direct ventricular interaction. In 13 anesthetized, closed-chest, normal dogs, we measured inferior vena cava flow and left and right ventricular dimensions and output during mechanical ventilation, during an inspiratory hold, and (during apn...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate left ventricular function by echocardiography before and after kidney transplantation (KT). METHODS This analytical study included 50 patients that had successful KT in Shahid Beheshti Hospital, Babol, Iran from October 2005 to December 2007. The echocardiography study was performed by one cardiologist before and at least 3 months after KT. Data were analyzed by SPSS, an...

Left atrial function was evaluated in patients with and without remote myocardial infarction. The simultaneous left atrial pressure recording and left atrial and left ventricular cineangiograms were obtained with a catheter-tip micromanometer. The pressure-volume curve of the left atrium was composed of an A-loop and a V-loop. The ratio of active atrial emptying to left ventricular stroke volum...