the most frequent congenital heart defects in the neonatal period are ventricular septal defects. ventricular septal aneurysms can rarely develop from an interventricular septal (ivs) defect in adults. we describe a 47-year-old man with an aneurysm in the ivs growing towards the right ventricle, which was confirmed by cardiac computed tomographic angiography and was missed by echocardiography.

Neuroblastoma at stage IVS, defined by dissemination to specific tissues and age <1 year at diagnosis, regularly follows spontaneous regression without cytotoxic treatment. To uncover the molecular characteristics of this subtype, Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) profiles from stage IVS and fatal stage IV tumors were compared. A SAGE tag (GCAACTTAAC) was detected that was overrepresent...

Pulsus paradoxus is an exaggeration of the normal inspiratory decrease in systolic blood pressure. Despite a century of attempts to explain this sign consensus is still lacking. To solve the controversy and reveal the exact mechanism, we reexamined the characteristic anatomic arrangement of the circulation system in the chest and designed these mechanical models based on related hydromechanic p...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the pattern of right ventricular (RV) functional recovery and its relation with left ventricular (LV) function and interventricular septal (IVS) motion in low risk patients after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). DESIGN AND SETTING Multicentre clinical trial carried out in 47 Italian coronary care units. PATIENTS 500 patients from the GISSI (Gruppo Italiano per lo Stu...

BACKGROUND Several studies have shown that long-term right ventricular (RV) overload in animal models alters myocardial energy substrate metabolism. However, whether long-term RV volume overload alters this metabolism in the human is unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS We performed positron emission tomography with [(18)F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and single-photon emission tomography (SPECT) with [(...

We evaluated a novel scintigraphic method using new parameters of mechanical left ventricular (LV) dyssynchrony and correlated it with clinical outcomes in heart failure patients with reduced ejection fraction receiving cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). METHODS Sixty-six advanced heart failure patients referred for CRT with an LV ejection fraction (EF) of < 35% and QRS ≥ 120 ms were st...

β-Thalassemia (β-thal) is a major public health problem in Albania as it is in many Mediterranean countries. We determined the different β-thal alleles that are present in the Albanian population by using the temporal temperature gradient electrophoresis (TTGE) method because of its high throughput, cost-effectiveness, sensitivity and simplicity. DNA from blood of 68 patients with β-thal, 26 wi...

Echocardiographic characteristics of the interventricular septum (IVS) have been studied in eight patients with chronic constrictive pericarditis (CP). Values of septal thickening (ST) were clearly below normal in all cases. Interventricular septal systolic motion (IVSSM) was normal in four cases, hypokinetic in three and paradoxical in one. In seven out of the eight patients, an early interven...

AIMS To determine the presence and extent of delayed contrast enhancement (DCE) in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PHT) using contrast enhanced-cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (ce-CMR). METHODS AND RESULTS Twenty-five patients with PHT underwent ce-CMR and right heart catheterization. Right ventricular (RV) and left ventricular (LV) volumes, ejection fraction, mass, and DCE ma...

β-Thalassemia is the most common inherited disorder in Azerbaijan. The aim of our study was to reveal genotype-to-phenotype correlations of the most common β-thalassemia mutations in an Azerbaijani population. Patients with codon 8 (-AA), IVS-I-6 (T>C), and IVS-II-1 (G>A) mutations, which are reportedly the most common β-globin gene mutations among the local population, were tested for hematolo...