Atherosclerosis is a lifelong process involving artery wall thickening. Increased wall thickness has been widely adopted as a preclinical surrogate marker of atherosclerosis. A prerequisite for such a surrogate marker is that it is a structural characteristic of the vessel wall that is not subject to acute changes. The purpose of this study was to examine the acute effects of vasodilator drug a...

Left ventricula wall thickness (LVWT) was measured by ultrasound in 100 subjects without heart disease. The data on both diastolic (LVWT,) and systolic (LVWT,) thickness were related to sex, age, weight, height, heart volume (HV), and ECG voltage criteria. LVWT, was greater in men (P<0.01) but LVWT, was of the same magnitude in both sexes. In both sexes LVWT, and LVWT, increased with age (P<0.0...

Background Left ventricular (LV) myocardial wall thickness is influenced by non-ischemic conditions like cardiomyopathies (CMP) as well as ischemic disorders, i. e. coronary artery disease (CAD). For CMP, regional wall thickness under resting conditions has prognostic value and serves as risk predictor for future cardiovascular events. In CAD, aside from perfusion also inadequate dobutamine wal...

BACKGROUND Low contact force and force-time integral (FTI) during catheter ablation are associated with ineffective lesion formation, whereas excessively high contact force and FTI may increase the risk of complications. We sought to evaluate the optimal FTI for pulmonary vein (PV) isolation based on atrial wall thickness under the ablation line. METHODS AND RESULTS Contact force parameters a...

The effect of finite wall thickness on the stability of n=1 resistive wall modes in toroidal plasmas is investigated. A fusion reactor-relevant configuration is examined. The investigation employs a novel ideal-magnetohydrodynamics adaptive shooting code for axisymmetric plasmas, extended to take into account the wall thickness. Although finite wall thickness generally reduces the growth rate o...

The aim of the study was to examine the deformation modes and also degradation of an adhesively bonded rectangular cross section beam used in the automotive body structure. The study included: (1) performing new experimental investigations on the three-point bend behavior of a rectangular cross section beam made by adhesive bonding method. (2) developing a finite element (FE) model to predict t...

PURPOSE To determine the extent of thickening of the carotid arterial walls that may be accommodated by outward remodeling. MATERIALS AND METHODS Institutional review board approval was obtained at each participating site, and informed consent was obtained from each participant. All study sites conducted this study in compliance with HIPAA requirements. A total of 2066 participants (age range...

BACKGROUND Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a prevalent disease which is of significant concern because of the morbidity associated with the continuing expansion of the abdominal aorta and its ultimate rupture. The transient interaction between blood flow and the wall contributes to wall stress which, if it exceeds the failure strength of the dilated arterial wall, will lead to aneurysm ruptu...