Percutaneous coronary intervention-induced variations in systemic parameters of inflammation: relationship with the mode of stenting.

Background: During percutaneous coronary intervention, the technique of stent implantation (both direct and complementary stenting) is guided using both clinical and angiographic features. We assessed potential relationships between procedural parameters and angioplasty-induced variations in inflammatory parameters in patients treated by these two different techniques.

Methods: A total of 85 consecutive patients due to undergo stent implantation were prospectively enrolled.

Tissue Doppler imaging and conventional echocardiography after anthracycline treatment in adults: early and late alterations of left ventricular function during a prospective study.

Aim Of The Study: To evaluate the short and long-term effects of anthracycline chemotherapy in adults using conventional echocardiography and pulsed tissue Doppler imaging (TDI).

Methods And Results: Twenty patients were included of which 16 had a complete follow up. They underwent an echocardiography before chemotherapy, 1-3 months and 3.

Direct stent implantation without predilatation through 5 French guiding catheter following transfemoral coronary angiogram: a feasibility study.

Direct stenting (DS) is accepted as reducing procedural cost and duration and 5 Fr guiding catheters as lowering peripheral vascular complications. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility and safety of both strategies. We retrospectively studied 150 consecutive patients treated with DS strategy using a 5 Fr femoral approach.

Efficiency of amifostine as a protection against doxorubicin toxicity in rats during a 12-day treatment.

Background: Our purpose was to determine the effects of amifostine, a cytoprotective agent, on doxorubicin tolerance and cardiotoxicity in rats.

Materials And Methods: Male Wistar rats were treated every other day with an intraperitoneal injection of amifostine or saline 30 minutes before intraperitoneal injection of doxorubicin or saline. Weight change was recorded, and contractile function was evaluated after 11 injections by means of the isolated heart.