Unexplained syncope: implications of age and gender on patient characteristics and evaluation, the diagnostic yield of an implantable loop recorder, and the subsequent treatment.

Background: Syncope is a common clinical problem with a variety of underlying mechanisms, some of which occur more frequently in 1 of the sexes or at a certain age.

Hypothesis: There may be clinically significant age- and gender-related differences in patients with unexplained syncope.

Methods: Five hundred seventy patients (54% women) with unexplained syncope received an implantable loop recorder (ILR) and were followed until diagnosis or for at least 1 year.

Implantable defibrillators with enhanced detection algorithms: detection performance and safety results from the PainFree SST study.

Background: Implantable defibrillators (ICD) are highly effective in reducing arrhythmia-related mortality. ICD shock therapy has been shown to increase psychological distress, health care utilization, and is associated with increased mortality. The Protecta ICDs (Medtronic Inc.

Managed ventricular pacing compared with conventional dual-chamber pacing for elective replacement in chronically paced patients: results of the Prefer for Elective Replacement Managed Ventricular Pacing randomized study.

Background: Several studies have shown that unnecessary right ventricular pacing has detrimental effects.

Objective: To evaluate whether minimization of ventricular pacing as compared with standard dual-chamber pacing (DDD) improves clinical outcomes in patients referred for pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) replacement.

Methods: In an international single-blind, multicenter, randomized controlled trial, we compared DDD with managed ventricular pacing (MVP), a pacing mode developed to minimize ventricular pacing by promoting intrinsic atrioventricular conduction.

Early versus delayed implantation of a loop recorder in patients with unexplained syncope--effects on care pathway and diagnostic yield.

Background: This study looked to assess the care pathway and diagnostic yield in patients who received an implantable loop recorder (ILR) after an "initial phase of the diagnostic work-up" (initial work-up) or after a "full evaluation" of unexplained syncope.

Methods And Results: Physicians classified the timing of an ILR implant in 514 patients as either following an "initial work-up" (n=128; 25%) or "full evaluation" (n=386; 75%). Patients with an "initial work-up" underwent a median (IQ range) of 8 (6-14) tests prior to ILR implant compared to 14 (10-21) tests after "full evaluation" (p<0.

Use of an implantable loop recorder to increase the diagnostic yield in unexplained syncope: results from the PICTURE registry.

Aims: To collect information on the use of the Reveal implantable loop recorder (ILR) in the patient care pathway and to investigate its effectiveness in the diagnosis of unexplained recurrent syncope in everyday clinical practice.

Methods And Results: Prospective, multicentre, observational study conducted in 2006-2009 in 10 European countries and Israel. Eligible patients had recurrent unexplained syncope or pre-syncope.

MolLoc: a web tool for the local structural alignment of molecular surfaces.

MolLoc stands for Molecular Local surface comparison, and is a web server for the structural comparison of molecular surfaces. Given two structures in PDB format, the user can compare their binding sites, cavities or any arbitrary residue selection. Moreover, the web server allows the comparison of a query structure with a list of structures.

Effective labeling of molecular surface points for cavity detection and location of putative binding sites.

We present a method for detecting and comparing cavities on protein surfaces that is useful for protein binding site recognition. The method is based on a representation of the protein structures by a collection of spin-images and their associated spin-image profiles. Results of the cavity detection procedure are presented for a large set of non-redundant proteins and compared with SURFNET-ConSurf.

Discovery of similar regions on protein surfaces.

Discovery of a similar region on two protein surfaces can lead to important inference about the functional role or molecular interaction of this region for one of the proteins if such information is available for the other. We propose a new characterization of protein surfaces based on a spin-image representation of the surfaces that facilitates the simultaneous search of the entire surface of each of two proteins for a matching region. For a surface point, we introduce spin-image profiles that are related to the degree of exposure of the point to identify structurally equivalent surface regions in two proteins.