The METABANK score: A clinical tool to predict survival after stereotactic radiotherapy for oligometastatic disease.

Background And Purpose: Stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT, SBRT) is widely used in oligometastatic cancer, but the heterogeneity of the population complicates estimation of the prognosis. We investigated the role of different clinical and inflammatory parameters.

Materials And Methods: We included all patients treated with SRT for 1-5 oligometastases between 2003 and 2017 in our center.

Global alternans instability and its effect on non-linear wave propagation: dynamical Wenckebach block and self terminating spiral waves.

The main mechanism of formation of reentrant cardiac arrhythmias is via formation of waveblocks at heterogeneities of cardiac tissue. We report that heterogeneity and the area of waveblock can extend itself in space and can result formation of new additional sources, or termination of existing sources of arrhythmias. This effect is based on a new form of instability, which we coin as global alternans instability (GAI).

Small size ionic heterogeneities in the human heart can attract rotors.

Rotors occurring in the heart underlie the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias. Answering the question whether or not the location of rotors is related to local properties of cardiac tissue has important practical applications. This is because ablation of rotors has been shown to be an effective way to fight cardiac arrhythmias.

Initiation and dynamics of a spiral wave around an ionic heterogeneity in a model for human cardiac tissue.

In relation to cardiac arrhythmias, heterogeneity of cardiac tissue is one of the most important factors underlying the onset of spiral waves and determining their type. In this paper, we numerically model heterogeneity of realistic size and value and study formation and dynamics of spiral waves around such heterogeneity. We find that the only sustained pattern obtained is a single spiral wave anchored around the heterogeneity.

Action potential duration heterogeneity of cardiac tissue can be evaluated from cell properties using Gaussian Green's function approach.

Action potential duration (APD) heterogeneity of cardiac tissue is one of the most important factors underlying initiation of deadly cardiac arrhythmias. In many cases such heterogeneity can be measured at tissue level only, while it originates from differences between the individual cardiac cells. The extent of heterogeneity at tissue and single cell level can differ substantially and in many cases it is important to know the relation between them.