BACKGROUND A wide variety of instruments have been used to assess the functional capabilities and health status of patients with chronic heart failure (HF), but it is not known how well these tests are correlated with one another, nor which one has the best association with measured exercise capacity. METHODS AND RESULTS Forty-one patients with HF were assessed with commonly used functional, ...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was to compare the end-tidal O(2) pressure (PETO(2)) to end-tidal CO(2) pressure (PETCO(2)) in cardiac patients during rest and during 2 states of exercise: at anaerobic threshold (AT) and at peak. The purpose was to see which metabolic state, PETO(2) or PETCO(2), best correlated with exercise limitation. METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-eight patients with l...

Since final mitral valve (MV) closure and aortic ejection velocity are mediated by the same forces in early left ventricular (LV) contraction, the rate of final MV closure (BC slope) should reflect LV performance. We first verified whether peak final closing velocity (ds/dt) of the anterior MV leaflet (AMVL) is related to peak aortic ejection velocity (V) and LV dp/dt in 18 open-chest dogs. We ...

CONTEXT Insufficient hip and thigh strength may increase an athlete's susceptibility to injury. However, screening for strength deficits using isometric and isokinetic instrumentation may not be practical in all clinical scenarios. OBJECTIVE To determine if functional performance tests are valid indicators of hip and thigh strength. DESIGN Descriptive laboratory study. SETTING Research la...

Background—Although some patients with adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) report limitations in exercise capacity, we hypothesized that depressed exercise capacity may be more widespread than superficially evident during clinical consultation and could be a means of assessing risk. Methods and Results—Cardiopulmonary exercise testing was performed in 335 consecutive ACHD patients (age, 33 13...

BACKGROUND Although some patients with adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) report limitations in exercise capacity, we hypothesized that depressed exercise capacity may be more widespread than superficially evident during clinical consultation and could be a means of assessing risk. METHODS AND RESULTS Cardiopulmonary exercise testing was performed in 335 consecutive ACHD patients (age, 33+...

The direction-reversal visual evoked potential (DR-VEP) latency is a key measure of the development of motion processing in infancy. However, the latency of this response has not been previously investigated. For other stimuli, both the latency of an initial peak and a latency measure calculated from steady-state phase as a function of frequency have been shown to be important and distinctive i...

In patients with COPD, CT assessment of emphysema and airway disease is known to be associated with lung function and 6-minute walk distance. However, it remains to be determined whether low attenuation area (LAA) on CT is associated with aerobic capacity assessed using cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). In this prospective observational study, we repeatedly conducted high-resolution CT a...

PURPOSE This study investigated the correlation between isometric muscle strength, gross motor function, and gait parameters in patients with spastic cerebral palsy and to find which muscle groups play an important role for gait pattern in a flexed knee gait. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-four ambulatory patients (mean age, 10.0 years) with spastic cerebral palsy who were scheduled for single ...

An investigation on the Snoek-Kijster peak in high purity iron doped with 1000 at ppm of carbon was carried out. The study of the influence of low temperature deformation on the S-K peak revealed that screw dislocations may not play the major part in the S-K relaxation in w-Fe. The carbon S-K peak's parameters were found to be HSK = 1.84 ? 0.03 eV and .'EK = 0.7 x s-I . It was also found that c...