[A new resource for the bibliography research: project experience ILISI® Index of Italian Literature on Nursing Sciences].

Since July 2008 the ILISI (Index of Italian Literature on Nursing Sciences) elaborated by the IPASVI nursing college of Rome has been available on-line at the page http://www.ipasvi.roma.

ILISI® digital index of the Italian scientific literature of nursing.

The IPASVI Rome Nursing Board-Centre of Excellence-began the project of building a free accessed database, Ilisi®, where the main Italian nursing and health-related journals could be consulted (including the few peer reviewed, at international level, Italian journals of nursing). Today, it includes the abstracts of more than 2700 articles from 2004 of about 25 Italian journals of nursing and/or related to nursing disciplines. The Ilisi® project has got with Thisi-Italian thesaurus of nursing science-a controlled vocabulary specifically built for nursing science, its tool of feasibility.

Effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy on disease progression in patients with congestive heart failure.

Background: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) represents a new therapeutic modality of proven efficacy for selected patients with heart failure and ventricular asynchrony. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of CRT on clinical variables and cardiac remodeling in patients with moderate-to-severe congestive heart failure and inter/intraventricular conduction delays.

Methods: Thirty-seven patients (32 males, 5 females, mean age 73 +/- 7 years), in NYHA functional class III-IV, with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) < or = 35%, QRS > or = 150 ms, and left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD) > or = 55 mm, underwent CRT by biventricular pacing (InSync, InSync III, InSync ICD; Medtronic Inc.

Incessant ventricular tachycardia early after acute myocardial infarction: efficacy of radiofrequency catheter ablation but not of optimal coronary revascularization.

Incessant ventricular tachycardia is an arrhythmia refractory to conventional antiarrhythmic treatment. We describe the case of 55-year-old man who presented incessant ventricular tachycardia in the early post-acute phase of myocardial infarction. Optimal coronary revascularization was not effective, but radiofrequency catheter ablation was able to eliminate the anatomic substrate and clinical arrhythmic recurrence.

Torsade de pointes ventricular tachycardia during low dose intermittent dobutamine treatment in a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure.

The authors describe the case of a 56-year-old woman with chronic, severe heart failure secondary to dilated cardiomyopathy and absence of significant ventricular arrhythmias who developed QT prolongation and torsade de pointes ventricular tachycardia during one cycle of intermittent low dose (2.5 mcg/kg per min) dobutamine. This report of torsade de pointes ventricular tachycardia during intermittent dobutamine supports the hypothesis that unpredictable fatal arrhythmias may occur even with low doses and in patients with no history of significant rhythm disturbances.