The effect of cardiac shock wave therapy on myocardial function and perfusion in the randomized, triple-blind, sham-procedure controlled study.

Background: Recent triple-blind sham procedure-controlled study revealed neutral effects of the cardiac shock wave therapy (CSWT) on exercise tolerance and symptoms in patients with stable angina. Current data about the effects of CSWT on global and regional myocardial contractility and perfusion is limited. Hereby we report the results of an imaging sub-study that evaluated the capacity of CSWT to ameliorate myocardial ischemia induced during dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) and cardiac single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).

Arterial Destiffening Starts Early after Renal Artery Denervation.

Introduction: Renal artery denervation (RDN) is a new widely discussed method in treatment of hypertension. Most of the RDN studies assessed BP and arterial changes 3 and 6 months after the procedure, but there is a lack of trials that investigated early changes after RDN.

Aim: To investigate aortic stiffness 24-48 hours after the procedure and thus to examine whether RDN might have an early additive value for a cardiovascular risk decline beyond the lowering of blood pressure.