Septal Ablation with Radiofrequency Catheters Guided by Echocardiography for Treatment of Patients with Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: Initial Experience.

Background: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) can cause obstruction in the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT), and be responsible for the onset of limiting symptoms, such as tiredness. When such symptoms are refractory to pharmacological treatment, interventionist alternative therapies can be useful, such as septal ablation through the infusion of alcohol in the coronary artery or through myectomy. Recently, the use of a radiofrequency (RF) catheter for endocardial septal ablation guided by electroanatomic mapping has proven to be efficient, despite the high incidence of complete atrioventricular block.

Focused Endocardial Septal Ablation: A New Technique to Treat Postmyectomy Recurrent Gradient.

This report describes the case of a 64-year-old woman with a previous diagnosis of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy who underwent surgical myectomy but who had a persistent midventricular residual gradient. The patient was symptomatic despite medical treatment and chose to undergo percutaneous radiofrequency (RF) ablation focused on the gradient. RF delivery was performed, and the gradient was reduced from the initial 105/68 mm Hg (during Valsalva maneuver/at rest before ablation) to 24/10 mm Hg.

E/e` ratio is superior to speckle tracking for detecting elevated left ventricular end-diastolic pressure in patients with coronary artery disease and preserved ejection fraction.

Background: A weak correlation has been reported between left ventricular filling pressures and the traditional echocardiographic tools for the evaluation of diastolic function in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). On the other hand, studies that compared invasive measurements with speckle tracking echocardiography have shown promising results, but they were not exclusively targeted on this specific population.

Methods And Results: Immediately before the left heart catheterization, a comprehensive two-dimensional Doppler echocardiography and speckle tracking analysis was prospectively performed in outpatients referred for coronary angiography.

Treatment of patients with aortic atherosclerotic disease with paclitaxel-associated lipid nanoparticles.

Objective: The toxicity of anti-cancer chemotherapeutic agents can be reduced by associating these compounds, such as the anti-proliferative agent paclitaxel, with a cholesterol-rich nanoemulsion (LDE) that mimics the lipid composition of low-density lipoprotein (LDL). When injected into circulation, the LDE concentrates the carried drugs in neoplastic tissues and atherosclerotic lesions. In rabbits, atherosclerotic lesion size was reduced by 65% following LDE-paclitaxel treatment.

Simultaneous hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and muscular ventricular septal defect in an adult patient.

Background: The incidence of muscular ventricular septal defect (VSD) in children is rare, but its prevalence among hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients is surprisingly high.

Methods: We present a 24-year-old female with HCM associated with muscular VSD without significant symptoms or hemodynamic implications.

Conclusion: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging plays an important role in anatomic and functional noninvasive evaluation of these patients.