Concordance of left ventricular volumes and function measurements between two human readers, a fully automated AI algorithm, and the 3D heart model.

Background: Echocardiography is essential in cardiovascular medicine for screening, diagnosis, and monitoring. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve echocardiography by reducing variability and analysis time. While 3D echocardiography is becoming more accurate, 2D imaging still dominates clinical care.

Contrast Stress Echocardiography Findings in Myocardial Bridging Compared to Normal Coronary Course, With and Without Coronary Artery Disease.

Background: Myocardial bridging (MB) correlation with ischemia remains a diagnostic challenge. There is a lack of studies that have assessed MB using contrast stress echo and compared the findings with those in patients demonstrating a normal coronary course, with or without obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD).

Methods: We evaluated all consecutive patients who underwent contrast stress echocardiography and coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) due to suspected symptoms of CAD within 3 months in Parma Hospital.

When 3D echocardiography truly makes the difference: a case report of mitral annular ring dehiscence.

Real time 3D echocardiography has an established incremental diagnostic value over 2D imaging, especially during transesophageal evaluation of native and prosthetic heart valves. A 66 years old male patient, with an history of previous cardiac surgery for mitral annuloplasty and recurrent fever, came to the attention of our echo lab with an indication for transesophageal echocardiography after previous inconclusive transthoracic echocardiograms. Real time 3D echocardiography and 3D color doppler imaging resulted of outmost importance to clarify the presence of annular ring dehiscence, previously not well defined from 2D echocardiography imaging.

Peri-vascular adipose tissue attenuation on chest computed tomography in patients with Marfan Syndrome: a case series.

Background And Aim Of The Work: Marfan Syndrome is a genetic disorder that determines histopathological alterations of the aortic vascular wall leading to increased inflammatory component. The peri-vascular adipose tissue attenuation is a method able to capture localized vascular inflammation by mapping spatial changes of perivascular tissue attenuation on computed tomography.

Methods: We measured peri-vascular adipose tissue attenuation around the ascending aorta in three consecutive subjects with confirmed genetic diagnosis of Marfan Syndrome.

The Histopathological Correlate of Peri-Vascular Adipose Tissue Attenuation on Computed Tomography in Surgical Ascending Aorta Aneurysms: Is This a Measure of Tissue Inflammation?

On computed tomography (CT) imaging, a peri-vascular adipose tissue attenuation (pVAT) measure has been proposed as a non-invasive correlate of inflammation in the coronary artery vessels, and a single research group provided histopathological demonstration of this radiological/pathological correspondence. Our group has shown that patients with surgical-grade ascending aorta (AA) aneurysm display higher pVAT compared with patients with smaller aneurysms or normal AA. Based on histopathological studies on coronary arteries, we speculated that this correlation may be related to a non-otherwise specified aortic inflammatory process.

Myocardial Scar by Pulse-Cancellation Echocardiography Is Independently Associated with Appropriate Defibrillator Intervention for Primary Prevention after Myocardial Infarction.

Background: Myocardial scar burden impacts prognosis in patients with coronary artery disease who have experienced a myocardial infarction (MI). This has been demonstrated by late gadolinium enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance. Clinical experience with echocardiography suggests that the reflected ultrasound signal is enhanced in infarcted myocardial segments.

Visually assessed coronary and cardiac calcium outperforms perfusion data during scintigraphy in the prediction of adverse outcomes.

Objectives: To determine whether calcifications of the coronary arteries (coronary artery calcium 0 to 4 score), or extending the assessment also to cardiac valves and thoracic aorta (overall calcium 0 to 8 score), as seen on computed tomography for attenuation correction during stress-scintigraphy (SPECT-CT), are associated with total mortality and non-fatal myocardial infarction. We aimed to assess whether these calcifications added to the prognostic value of SPECT imaging.

Background: The presence/amount of calcium in the coronary arteries, but also in the heart valves and aorta, has been associated with cardiovascular (CV) and all-cause mortality.

Pericardial hyperechogenicity and "comets" in patients with acute pericarditis but no pericardial effusion: a comparison study with age-matched healthy controls.

Background And Aim: According to the published data and guidelines the diagnosis of pericarditis is mainly clinical; if we exclude patients with pericardial effusion, no single study has been able to relate specific echocardiographic findings to acute pericarditis. We hypothesized that pericardial hyperechogenicity and a defined finding that we named "pericardial comets", in analogy to lung comets, may be associated with acute pericarditis.

Methods: We retrospectively analysed the echocardiograms of patients aged <50 y/o with a confirmed pericarditis diagnosis and compared them with 2 prospectively healthy controls groups (either < or > 50 y/o) to detect a potential association of pericardial hyperechogenicity and/or pericardial comets with acute pericarditis.

Aortic valve sclerosis as a marker of coronary artery atherosclerosis; a multicenter study of a large population with a low prevalence of coronary artery disease.

Unlabelled: There are no studies analyzing the association between aortic valve sclerosis (AVS) and coronary artery disease (CAD) in a large and multicenter patient population with an overall low prevalence of CAD. We hypothesized that AVS could predict the presence and degree of CAD in patients with severe organic mitral regurgitation.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed consecutive patients with flail mitral leaflet who had coronary angiography for pre-surgical screening and not because suspect of CAD.

Contrast stress-echocardiography predicts cardiac events in patients with suspected acute coronary syndrome but nondiagnostic electrocardiogram and normal 12-hour troponin.

Background: No large study has demonstrated that any stress test can risk-stratify future hard cardiac events (cardiac death or myocardial infarction) in patients with suspected acute coronary syndromes (ACS), nondiagnostic electrocardiographic (ECG) findings, and normal troponin levels. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that combined contrast wall motion and myocardial perfusion echocardiographic assessment (cMCE) during stress echocardiography can predict long-term hard cardiac events in patients with suspected ACS, nondiagnostic ECG findings, and normal troponin.

Methods: A total of 545 patients referred for contrast stress echocardiography from the emergency department for suspected ACS but nondiagnostic ECG findings and normal troponin levels at 12 hours were followed up for cardiac events.