Background: In certain conditions, there is a need for a specific and improved measure of cardiac performance.  Routine methods for assessing left ventricular (LV) function are based on image-analysis or right heart monitoring which do not allow evaluation of ventriculo-arterial interaction. Chen et al presented a noninvasive method allowing measurement of end-systolic pressure–volume relation ...

OBJECTIVES To study the effect of mitral valve repair with or without concomitant tricuspid valve repair on functional tricuspid regurgitation and right ventricular function. METHODS From 2001 to 2007, 1833 patients with degenerative mitral valve disease, a structurally normal tricuspid valve, and no coronary artery disease underwent mitral valve repair, and 67 underwent concomitant tricuspid...

the aim of this study is to evaluate how far lempel-ziv complexity (lzc) of the binary symbolic sequences resulting from static or dynamic transformation (partitioning first-order difference) of the short-term electrocardiogram (ecg) signals (only 2 seconds duration) has the  potential in discriminating normal and ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation (vt/vf) subjects. the statistica...

this study evaluates the discriminative power of sequential spectrum analysis of the short-term electrocardiogram (ecg) time series in separating normal and subjects with life threatening arrhythmias like, ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation (vt/vf). the raw ecg time series is transformed into a series of binary symbols and the binary occupancy or relative distribution of mono-sequences (i.e. ...

BACKGROUND To determine how the tissues that surround the heart affect diastolic and systolic function during the perinatal period, we studied the pressure-diameter relation of the left ventricle in partially delivered fetal lambs. METHODS AND RESULTS We anesthetized (1.5-2.0% halothane, balance O2) and ventilated six pregnant ewes (142-144 days of gestation) and then partially delivered each...

BACKGROUND In patients with drug resistant incessant supraventricular tachycardia, radiofrequency induced ablation of the atrioventricular junction and pacemaker implantation have hitherto been considered a treatment of last resort. OBJECTIVE To assess the short and long term effects of ablation of the atrioventricular junction on systolic and diastolic left ventricular function in patients w...