BACKGROUND Retinal vessel calibre and vascular dilation/constriction in response to flicker light provocation may provide a measure distinguishing patients suffering from diabetes mellitus and/or cardiovascular disease. METHODS One hundred and sixteen age and sex matched patients with diabetes mellitus (DM), cardiovascular disease (CVD) and both DM and CVD (DM + CVD) underwent systemic and in...

Purpose: Time-resolved 3D PC-MRI with threedirectional velocity encoding (4D flow MRI) has been successfully applied in a number of studies for the analysis of altered hemodynamics in patients with cardiovascular disease. Data analysis, however, can be time consuming and often relies on the manual placement of 2D analysis planes at user defined vascular regions of interest. The analysis of flow...

PURPOSE To maximize effective use of mydriatic drugs through comparing the pupillary dilation effects between 1% tropicamide and 2.5% phenylephrine. METHODS Fifty people requiring pupillary dilation were divided into 3 groups. Group 1 was treated with one drop of 1% tropicamide in the right eye and one drop of 2.5% phenylephrine in the left eye. Group 2 was treated twice during a 5-minute int...

BACKGROUND In coronary artery disease, exercise training (ET) is associated with an improvement in endothelial function, but little is known about the relative effect of different types of training. The purpose of this study was to prospectively evaluate the effect of different types of ET on endothelial function in 209 patients after a first recent acute myocardial infarction. METHODS AND RE...

PURPOSE To evaluate factors associated with rapid rate of progression (ROP) of right ventricular (RV) dilation by cardiac MRI in repaired tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS All patients with repaired TOF with two MRIs were included. RV volumes and function were assessed by MRIs performed on a GE 1.5 Tesla (T) platform. The ROP of RV dilation was calculated as the differ...

BACKGROUND Myocardial recovery after ventricular assist devices (VAD) is rare but appears more common in nonischemic cardiomyopathies (NICM). We sought to evaluate left ventricular (LV) end diastolic diameter (LVEDD) for predicting recovery after VAD. METHODS AND RESULTS NICM patients receiving long-term mechanical support between 1996 and 2008 were reviewed. Subjects were divided into 3 grou...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether periodontal disease is associated with endothelial dysfunction and systemic inflammation. Epidemiological studies suggest that severe periodontal disease is associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk, but the mechanisms remain unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS We assessed flow-mediated dilation and nitroglycerin-mediated dilat...

In this paper we consider  (extended) metaplectic representation of the  semidirect product  $G_{mathbb{J}}=mathbb{R}^{2d}timesmathbb{J}$  where $mathbb{J}$ is a closed subgroup of $Sp(d,mathbb{R})$, the symplectic group. We will investigate continuous representation frame on $G_{mathbb{J}}$. We also discuss the existence of duals for such frames and give several characterization for them. Fina...

BACKGROUND Improvement in endothelial function may be an important mechanism by which estrogen replacement therapy protects postmenopausal women against coronary artery disease. However, combined hormone replacement therapy is more frequently used owing to the risk of uterine cancer with estrogen-only therapy. Concurrent progesterone treatment may attenuate the beneficial effects of estrogens n...