Improving Clinician Communication through Action Research.

There are many challenges to interdisciplinary communication in home care. Management often takes a top-down approach, instructing home care clinicians on methods to improve communication. In this pretest-posttest intervention study, a bottom-up approach was taken using a focus group to allow home care clinicians to identify, develop, and implement strategies to share critical clinical and social information.

Surgical treatment of left ventricular echinococcosis through the HeartPort technique.

Echinococcal lesions rarely involve the heart; nonetheless, echinococcal cysts of the left ventricular myocardium often demand surgical treatment due to the risk of rupture and anaphylaxis. Herein, an echinococcal cyst of the anteroapical left ventricular wall was managed through small left anterior thoracotomy; repair was achieved under cardioplegic arrest (endoaortic balloon occlusion) with an uneventful course. We discuss the usefulness of such a less invasive approach for the depicted lesion (minimized manipulation of the heart and reduced surgical aggressiveness) and for other lesions involving the apical/lateral LV region.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging monitoring of pathological changes in rodent livers during hyperoxia and hypercapnia.

Unlabelled: Liver diseases and regeneration are associated with hemodynamic changes denoting pathological alterations. Determining and monitoring physiological and pathological liver changes is essential for diagnostic and therapeutic objectives. Our aim was to determine the feasibility of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during hypercapnia and hyperoxia for monitoring liver pathology.

Halofuginone upregulates the expression of heparanase in thioacetamide-induced liver fibrosis in rats.

Advanced hepatic fibrosis is characterized by excessive extracellular matrix deposition, where collagen and proteoglycans are the main constituents of scar tissue. In previous studies, we showed that heparanase, a heparan sulfate-degrading enzyme, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) play an important role during liver development and remodeling. In this communication, we investigated the relationship between heparanase and VEGF in thioacetamide-induced liver fibrosis in rats.

Recurrence of functional mitral regurgitation in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy undergoing mitral valve repair: how to predict it.

This study was aimed at identifying predictive variables for recurrence of mitral regurgitation (MR) in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) undergoing mitral valve (MV) repair. From January 1997 to December 2005, 142 patients with DCM, 105 (73.9%) ischemic and 37 (26.