Echocardiography in the neonatal intensive care unit has led to improvements in our ability to assess the neonatal heart in health and disease. Advances in neonatal cardiac imaging have provided the capability to obtain quantitative information that often supersedes the qualitative information provided by conventional methods. Novel quantitative measures of function include the assessment of th...

BACKGROUND In pediatric echocardiography, pulse wave Doppler, and tissue Doppler imaging velocities are widely used to assess cardiac function. Current reference values and Z scores, allowing adjustment for growth are limited by inconsistent methodologies and small sample size. Using a standardized approach for parametric modeling and Z score quality assessment, we propose new pediatric referen...

BACKGROUND Tissue Doppler echocardiography-derived strain rate and strain measurements (SDE) are new quantitative indices of intrinsic cardiac deformation. The aim of this study was to validate and compare these new indices of regional cardiac function to measurements of 3-dimensional myocardial strain by tagged MRI. METHODS AND RESULTS The study population included 33 healthy volunteers, 17 ...

Next to dogs and cats, rabbits are popular companion animals in the United Kingdom with 1.7 million kept as pets. Almost 60% of these rabbits are registered with a veterinary practice. The number of reported or anecdotal reports describing congenital or acquired cardiac diseases is increasing, which results in a growing demand to perform echocardiography in pet rabbits as clinical cases. Report...

The spectral Doppler mitral flow pattern, alone or combined with tissue Doppler mitral annulus velocity, can be used to predict left ventricular (LV) filling pressure in humans, whereas invasive hemodynamic measurements are still required in the rat. This study was undertaken to assess whether LV end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP) can be estimated using Doppler echocardiography in the rat after myo...

OBJECTIVE To characterize left ventricular regional myocardial function through tissue Doppler echocardiography in healthy adults and to assess the influence of aging in this function. METHODS In 45 healthy volunteers divided in two groups (< 45 and > 45 years old) we assessed longitudinal and radial regional function (velocities, times intervals and velocity-time integrals). Data were compar...

Aldosterone has hypertrophic and profibrotic effects on the heart. The relationship between plasma aldosterone levels and left ventricular diastolic function in hypertension, however, is unclear. The aim of this study was to examine this relationship in treatment-naïve hypertensive patients free of comorbidities that could affect left ventricular diastolic filling properties. In 115 patients wi...