Older drivers are at risk for vehicle crashes due to impairments of visual processing and attention, placing these drivers at greater risk in driving tasks that require continuous attention to neighboring traffic, especially lead vehicles (LVs). We investigated car following behavior in 42 younger drivers (ages 18 to 44 years) and 58 older drivers (ages 65 to 86 years) in a driving simulator. T...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the pattern of coronary blood flow velocity immediately after successful primary stenting and the recovery of left ventricular (LV) wall motion in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). BACKGROUND It is difficult to predict the recovery of LV wall motion immediately after direct angioplasty in AMI. Recent r...

AIM To find out if Doppler myocardial imaging (DMI) can detect early signs of left ventricular (LV) dysfunction in a rat model of diabetic cardiomyopathy. METHODS Eight control and 12 Streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats underwent transthoracic echocardiography with high-resolution technology at baseline and 2, 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks after STZ injection. Radial function was analysed usi...

BACKGROUND Asthma is the most common cause of respiratory disorders among children. We aimed to investigate left (LV) and right (RV) ventricular function in asthmatic children as detected by conventional and tissue Doppler echocardiography. METHODS Fifty pediatric patients with asthma and forty healthy children were studied. Pulmonary function tests, electrocardiography and echocardiographic ...

M-mode echo recordings of the left ventricle (LV) and inflow LV Doppler velocimetry were performed in nine normal fetuses at a gestational age of 36-39 weeks. In each fetus approximately 80 consecutive cardiac cycles were digitized. The duration of each cardiac cycle (T) and the corresponding end-diastolic (EDD), end-systolic (ESD) dimensions of LV or the peak velocity of early (E) and late atr...

BACKGROUND No gold standard currently exists for quantification of mitral regurgitation (MR) severity. Classification by echocardiography is based on integrative criteria using color and spectral Doppler and anatomic measurements. We hypothesized that a simple Doppler left ventricular early inflow-outflow index (LVEIO), based on flow velocity into the left ventricle (LV) in diastole and ejected...

Congenital heart diseases (CHD) appear as a large variety of anomalies with different ventricular shapes, sizes and haemodynamics . Reliable assessment of ventricular function in children with complex cHd, such as univentricular heart or after a Fontan operation, is difficult, as the majority of echocardiographic (ECHO) parameters rely on geometric assumptions or haemodynamic factors . A number...

Background Banding of the pulmonary artery to induce left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy followed by arterial switch operation (ASO) within 2 weeks has been performed when a primary ASO was considered high risk because of inadequate LV hypertrophy. Methods and Results Potential adverse myocardial effects of the two-stage procedure were examined by comparing outcome in 18 patients after a rapid tw...

BACKGROUND It has been recognized that "cross-talk" occurs between coronary flow and left ventricular (LV) function. This study tested the hypothesis that impairment of coronary flow reserve (CFR) in arterial hypertension is associated with LV systolic and diastolic dysfunction, independent of abnormalities in LV geometry. METHODS We studied 59 newly diagnosed, never-treated hypertensive pati...

PURPOSE Mitochondrial disease (MD) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) are often associated with cardiomyopathy, but the myocardial variability has not been isolated to a specific characteristic. We evaluated the left ventricular (LV) mass by echocardiography to identify the general distribution and functional changes of the myocardium in patients with MD or DMD. METHODS We retrospectively ...