INTRODUCTION Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is a reliable, noninvasive imaging method that is useful in the evaluation of cardiovascular thrombosis. We conducted a retrospective study of all the echocardiograms from patients in the postoperative care unit to assess the role of TTE in thrombus identification in the left ventricle. METHODS This retrospective database evaluation included a...

background: dilated cardiomyopathy is associated with a progressive deterioration in cardiac function and eventually death. initial interest in this hypothesis was to create another large animal model for dilated cardiomyopathy in addition to pigs and dogs . methods: after the induction of anesthesia to 10 female sheep, a carotid-jugular shunt was created in all the animals via a 1-cm fistula b...

Dilated cardiomyopathy can be the end-stage form and common denominator of several cardiac disorders of known cause, such as hypertensive, ischemic, diabetic and Chagasic diseases. However, some individuals have clinical findings, such as an increase in ventricular chamber size and impaired contractility (classical manifestations of dilated cardiomyopathy) even in the absence of a diagnosed pri...

Dilated cardiomyopathy can be the end-stage form and common denominator of several cardiac disorders of known cause, such as hypertensive, ischemic, diabetic and Chagasic diseases. However, some individuals have clinical findings, such as an increase in ventricular chamber size and impaired contractility (classical manifestations of dilated cardiomyopathy) even in the absence of a diagnosed pri...

BACKGROUND QT dispersion (QTd) is increased in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. Increased QTd has been associated with the risk of sudden death. We studied: a) the relation between QTd on 12-lead ECG and QTd-ECG Holter; b) the relation between QTd apex (QTda) and QTd end (QTde) on ECG Holter and the risk of ventricular arrhythmias in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. METHODS AND RESU...

The presence and properties of serum autoantibodies against beta-adrenergic receptors in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy were studied using synthetic peptides derived from the predicted sequences of the human beta-adrenergic receptors. Peptides corresponding to the sequences of the second extracellular loop of the human beta 1- and beta 2-adrenergic receptors were used as antige...

Background—Autoantibodies against synthetic peptides of b-adrenergic receptors have been observed in human cardiomyopathy. However, it has never been shown that such antibodies really interact with native human b-adrenergic receptors, nor has the clinical impact of such an interaction been investigated in larger groups of patients. Methods and Results—We screened 104 patients with dilated or is...

BACKGROUND Recognizing that inhibitors of phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) are increasingly employed in patients with pulmonary hypertension and right ventricular (RV) failure, we examined PDE5 expression in the human RV and its impact on myocardial contractility. METHODS AND RESULTS Tissue extracts from the RV of 20 patients were assayed for PDE5 expression using immunoblot and immunohistoche...