OBJECTIVE To investigate whether cardiac tissue extracts from rats could mimic the cardiac microenvironment and act as a natural inducer in promoting the differentiation of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) into cardiomyocytes. METHODS Three kinds of tissue extract or cell lysate [infarcted myocardial tissue extract (IMTE), normal myocardial tissue extract (NMTE) and cultured neonatal myocard...

Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and echocardiography are often the primary imaging techniques for many patients with congenital heart disease (CHD). However, with modern generations of CT systems and recent advances in temporal and spatial resolution, cardiac CT has been gaining an increasing reputation in the field of cardiac imaging and in the evaluation of patients with congenital heart d...

conclusions ia fluid resuscitation is superior to iv resuscitation in hemorrhagic shock induced cardiac arrest. results while iv rl infusion failed to restore chest motion in mice (n = 5), ia rl infusion restored chest motion in all mice examined (n = 6) (p = 0.0067). in three mice, iv rl infusion after cardiac arrest showed no effect on cc. after failure of venous infusion, ia rl infusion was ...

right ventricular failure due to right coronary artery disease, right ventricular hypertrophy, stunning, abnormal septal motion, myocardial infarction, or non-homogeneous distribution of cardioplegia is an uncommon but serious complication of open heart surgery. we report a patient with severe right ventricular hypertrophy secondary to severe mitral valve stenosis and another patient with detac...

The gene networks regulating heart morphology and cardiac integrity are largely unknown. We previously reported a role for the heterotrimeric G protein gamma subunit 1 (Ggamma1) in mediating cardial-pericardial cell adhesion in Drosophila. Here we show G-oalpha47A and Gbeta13F cooperate with Ggamma1 to maintain cardiac integrity. Cardial-pericardial cell adhesion also relies on the septate junc...

The long-term outcome following cardiac valve replacement is primarily determined by three factors: irreversible cardiac and pulmonary pathology secondary to the valvular disease (especially left ventricular myocardial hypertrophy and degeneration, and pulmonary vascular disease), pre-existing cardiac disease, including congenital lesions and coronary arterial atherosclerotic occlusions, and pr...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has evolved as a clinical standard-of-care imaging modality for cardiac morphology, function assessment, and guidance of cardiac interventions. All these applications rely on accurate extraction of the myocardial tissue and blood pool from the imaging data. Here we propose a framework for left ventricle (LV) segmentation from cardiac cine-MRI. First, we segment ...

BACKGROUND Swine are recognized animal models of human cardiovascular diseases. Normal values of cardiac morphology and function have been published for swine but for smaller number of pigs and not for swine whose weights ranged up 100 kg. In order to improve the value of results of an investigation on cardiac morphology and function in swine when such data are extrapolated to humans, the aim o...

Objective(s): Currently, the development of nanoparticles for the stabilization and targeted delivery of cardiac drugs has gained significance. The present study aimed to develop nontoxic nanoparticles based on chitosan-hyaluronic acid (HA), encapsulate dinitrosyl iron complexes (DNICs, donors NO) into the nanoparticles to increase the stability and effectiveness of their action, and assess the...

Background: In patients with return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) after resuscitation, the current gold standard for assessing acute cardiac function is cardiac echocardiography. However, its use may be limited in acute critically ill patients by delays, interobserver discrepancies or the varying priorities of radiographic examinations. We now report that standardised acute cardiac function...