CEUS cardiac exam protocols International Contrast Ultrasound Society (ICUS) recommendations.

The present CEUS Cardiac Exam Protocols represent the first effort to promulgate a standard set of protocols for optimal administration of ultrasound enhancing agents (UEAs) in echocardiography, based on more than two decades of experience in the use of UEAs for cardiac imaging. The protocols reflect current clinical CEUS practice in many modern echocardiography laboratories throughout the world. Specific attention is given to preparation and dosing of three UEAs that have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and additional regulatory bodies in Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

Predictors of Delayed Accreditation of Echocardiography Laboratories: An Analysis of the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission Database.

Background: Intersocietal Accreditation Commission Echocardiography accreditation involves a broad-based evaluation of a given echocardiography facility's daily operation. An in-depth analysis of the most frequent noncompliant accreditation items provides learning opportunities for improvement of echocardiographic practice and facilities.

Methods: Data from 3,260 facilities applying for accreditation from 2011 to 2013 were analyzed to assess five key elements, each including multiple variables.

Reconsidering culturally competent approaches to American Indian healing and well-being.

There is an urgent need to eliminate mental health disparities experienced by American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs). Service providers and researchers often address these disparities by focusing on low rates of participation in Western mental health services. In part, this reflects limited understandings of the sociopolitical and historical context of AI/AN mental health problems.

"We're still in a struggle": Diné resilience, survival, historical trauma, and healing.

As part of a community/university collaborative effort to promote the mental health and well-being of Diné (Navajo) youth, we explored the relevance of addressing historical trauma and current structural stressors, and of building on individual and community strengths through healing and social transformation at multiple levels. Qualitative analyses of 74 ethnographic interviews with 37 Diné youth, parents, and grandparents suggested that a focus on historical trauma as a conceptual frame for behavioral health inequities, understood within the context of resilience and survival, is appropriate. Our findings also highlight the salience of current stressors such as poverty and violence exposure.

Echocardiographic findings in classical and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndromes.

Structural cardiovascular alterations in the classical and hypermobile forms of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome(EDS) warrant investigation. We have examined a cohort of 38 patients with hypermobile and classical EDSs using two-dimensional echocardiography. The cohort includes 7 males and 31 females, with an age range from 12-60 years.