A. Acute coronary syndrome and cocaine use: 8-year prevalence and inhospital outcomes. Characteristics, management, and outcomes of cocaine-positive patients with acute coronary syndrome. For the first time in Spain, a large population-based multicenter study confirmed the prolongation of hospital stay and has quantified the related costs in patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction ass...

BACKGROUND Older age, as a factor we cannot affect, is consistently one of the main negative prognostic values in patients with acute myocardial infarction. One of the most powerful factors that improves outcomes in patients with acute coronary syndromes is the revascularization preferably performed by percutaneous coronary intervention. No data is currently available for the role of age in lar...

We investigate the potentials and limitations of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of patient specific models from 3D angiographies. There are many technical problems in acquisition of proper vascular models, in pre-processing for making 2D surface and 3D volume meshes and also in post-processing steps for display the CFD analysis. We hope that our study could serves as a technical re...

BACKGROUND Invasive screenings at predefined time intervals for acute rejection and transplant coronary artery disease (TxCAD) are standard procedures. However, cardiac biopsies and catheterizations are distressing and risky for the patients and are also costly. We assessed the reliability of pulsed-wave tissue Doppler imaging (PW-TDI) for the timing of invasive examinations in heart recipients...

OBJECTIVES Although rare, life-threatening complications requiring emergency cardiac surgery do occur after diagnostic and therapeutic cardiac catheterization procedures. The operative mortality has been persistently reported to remain high. The purpose of this observational study was to evaluate and report the outcomes, with particular emphasis on early mortality, of these risky operations tha...

OBJECTIVE Compare hemodynamic and angiographic patterns, as well as atherosclerotic lesion morphology, in diabetic and non-diabetic females with unstable angina or non-ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction (UA/NSTEMI). METHODS Two interventional cardiologists determined the presence of severe atherosclerotic lesion, defined as those > or = 70%; plaque morphology, according to the America...

OBJECTIVE Anastomosing the left anterior descending artery (LAD) by use of the internal mammary artery (IMA) via an anterior minithoracotomy represents the most commonly performed minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB). However, little is known about angiographic results beyond patency rates. METHODS Therefore, a retrospective analysis of 205 consecutive control angiographi...

BackgroundCoronary artery disease (CAD) is the major cause of death in the world today. Many factors are responsible for causing CAD, but some patients have none of the known major risk factors, i.e. hypertension, diabetes, smoking, hyperlipidemia and family history of CAD. Recent studies suggest other factors such as lipoprotein a (LPa), fibrinogen and homocysteine as risk factors for CAD. The...

PURPOSE To validate the long-term efficacy of a 90-min. educational mini-course in less-irradiating cardiac interventional techniques. MATERIALS AND METHODS Before, two months after, and two years after the mini-course (periods I, II, and III), we analyzed the following radiation dose parameters for ten coronary angiographies (CA), performed by each of 7 cardiologists: total dose-area product...