OBJECTIVE To compare pulmonary artery systolic pressure (PASP) between thalassemic patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) for whom acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) was and was not prescribed after 1 year. METHODS A retrospective cohort study was conducted at the hematological outpatient clinic at Chiang Rai Hospital, Chiang Rai, Thailand. All new cases of thalassemia with PAH from Janu...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES The ability of stress echocardiography to provide prognostic information that supplements that obtainable from clinical data and exercise electrocardiography is still controversial. Our aim was to determine whether dobutamine stress echocardiography provides additional information on long-term prognosis after conventional exercise testing has indicated that a patient...

OBJECTIVE Iron overload limits the life expectancy of thalassaemic patients by causing cardiac toxicity. Iron also plays a catalytic role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of (99m)Tc Tetrofosmin gated myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (GMPS) in the detection of cardiac dysfunction in patients with thalassemia major. MATERIALS AND METHODS Fo...

An elevated tricuspid regurgitant jet velocity (TRV) is associated with hemolysis and early mortality in sickle cell disease, yet risk factors, clinical parameters, and mortality associated with this biomarker in thalassemia are poorly defined. This report summarizes the prevalence of an elevated TRV in 325 patients screened by Doppler echocardiography in the Thalassemia Clinical Research Netwo...

A 22-year-old man visited our hospital for an evaluation of a suspected mediastinal tumor on chest radiography (Picture A, arrow). He was asymptomatic and had no past medical history. Electrocardiography (ECG) and transthoracic echocardiography demonstrated normal findings, and Holter ECG showed no significant arrhythmias. As contrastenhanced three-dimensional chest computed tomography revealed...

Case Presentation A 53-year-old Chinese male underwent dobutamine stress echocardiography for evaluation of chest pain. He had a background history of previously treated pulmonary tuberculosis and depression. Baseline left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was normal. At peak intravenous dobutamine infusion of 40 mcg/kg/min, he developed retrosternal chest tightness and his systolic blood pr...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate cardiac arrhythmias during and after pregnancy in women with Chagas' disease without apparent heart disease using dynamic electrocardiography. METHODS Twenty pregnant women with Chagas' disease without apparent heart disease aged 19 to 42 years (26.96 +/- 3.6) and a control group of 20 non-chagasic pregnant patients aged 16 to 34 years (22.5 +/- 4.8). The patients were s...

The consequences of transfusional iron overload on left ventricular diastolic filling have never been investigated systematically in patients with thalassemia major. In the present study, the pattern of left ventricular filling was assessed by Doppler echocardiography in 32 patients with thalassemia major (age, 17 +/- 5 years) who had not experienced symptoms of heart failure and had normal lef...

The aim of the study was to estimate prevalence of tricuspid dysplasia (TD) in dogs with respect to breed, age, sex, clinical signs, and echocardiographic findings and to compare this data with literature. TD was found in 15 dogs (6.5% of congenital cardiac disease) of 215 dogs with congenital heart defects. All dogs had right heart enlargement on thoracic radiographs, echocardiography, and ele...