Early recovery of tricuspid annular isovolumic acceleration after mitral valve surgery - an observational study.

Purpose: Patients undergoing mitral valve surgery are at risk for right ventricular (RV) dysfunction resulting from increased left atrial pressure and increased pulmonary artery impedance. Measures of longitudinal measures of RV function, such as displacement, are commonly performed but have been shown to be depressed after cardiac surgery despite good patient recovery. The aim of this observational study was to assess the early perioperative time course of longitudinal transthoracic echocardiographic (TTE) markers of RV function in a patient population undergoing mitral valve surgery.

Pulmonary Impedance and Pulmonary Doppler Trace in the Perioperative Period.

Pulmonary hypertension and associated vascular changes may frequently accompany left-sided heart disease in the adult cardiac surgical population. Perioperative assessment of right ventricular function using echocardiography is well established. In general, understanding the constraints upon which the right ventricle must work is mostly limited to invasive monitoring consisting of pulmonary artery pressures, cardiac output, and pulmonary vascular resistance.

Pulmonary Artery Acceleration Time in Cardiac Surgical Patients.

Objectives: To examine the potential for using pulmonary Doppler to assess the hydraulic forces opposing right ventricular ejection in a perioperative setting.

Design: A prospective, observational study.

Setting: A university hospital tertiary-care center.

Induction of cardiomyogenesis in human embryonic stem cells by human embryonic stem cell-derived definitive endoderm.

We previously reported that chick anterolateral endoderm (AL endoderm) induces cardiomyogenesis in mouse embryoid bodies. However, the requirement to micro-dissect AL endoderm from gastrulation-stage embryos precludes its use to identify novel cardiomyogenic factors, or to scale up cardiomyocyte numbers for therapeutic experiments. To circumvent this problem we have addressed whether human definitive endoderm (hDE) cells, which can be efficiently generated in large numbers from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), can mimic the ability of AL endoderm to induce cardiac myogenesis.

Myocardial interstitial fluid inhibits proliferation and cardiomyocyte differentiation in pluripotent embryonic stem cells.

Several recent studies have demonstrated that the transplantation of pluripotent murine embryonic stem cells (mESCs) can improve or restore the function of infarcted myocardium. Although the extent of remuscularization and its contribution to the restoration of function are unclear, these outcomes are likely strongly influenced by factors in the infarcted and/or ischemic environment. As an initial step toward understanding how the ischemic environment of host myocardium affects transplanted pluripotent cells, we have taken a reductionist approach wherein mESCs are cultured in medium containing ischemic myocardial interstitial fluid (iMIF).

Isotopic compositions and accurate masses of single isotopic peaks.

This paper presents and proves an algorithm to calculate the isotopic composition of individual (nominal) isotopic peaks. From this information one can calculate the accurate masses of isotopic peaks. This opens the way to use accurate mass measurements to determine chemical compositions of compounds using non-mono-isotopic peaks.