Understanding the professional satisfaction of hospital trainees in Australia.

Context: Ensuring that specialty trainees are professionally satisfied is not only important from the point of view of trainee well-being, but is also critical if health systems are to retain doctors. Despite this, little systematic research in specialist trainees has identified policy-amenable factors correlated with professional satisfaction. This study examined factors associated with trainee professional satisfaction in a national Australian cohort.

Using Coronary Artery Calcium Scoring as Preventative Health Tool to Reduce the High Burden of Cardiovascular Disease in Indigenous Australians.

Background: Indigenous Australians suffer higher rates of ischaemic heart disease resulting in premature mortality. Despite this, Indigenous Australians undergo less cardiovascular investigation and intervention than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Recent evidence suggests that computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) is not only able to accurately predict cardiovascular risk, but also results in reduced rates of myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death.

Partial empty sella in a woman with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis: A rare presentation of polycythaemia rubra vera.

We report the case of a 59 year old woman who presented with a six week history of worsening bifrontal headache. On CT brain the only abnormal finding was a partially empty sella potentially indicative of increased intracranial pressure. MRI found a large cerebral venous sinus thrombosis in the superior sagittal sinus.

Exacerbation of cardiac energetic impairment during exercise in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: a potential mechanism for diastolic dysfunction.

Aims: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the commonest cause of sudden cardiac death in the young, with an excess of exercise-related deaths. The HCM sarcomere mutations increase the energy cost of contraction and impaired resting cardiac energetics has been documented by measurement of phosphocreatine/ATP (PCr/ATP) using (31)Phosphorus MR Spectroscopy ((31)P MRS). We hypothesized that cardiac energetics are further impaired acutely during exercise in HCM and that this would have important functional consequences.

Myocardial steatosis and left ventricular contractile dysfunction in patients with severe aortic stenosis.

Background: Aortic stenosis (AS) leads to left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and dysfunction. We hypothesized that cardiac steatosis is involved in the pathophysiology and also assessed whether it is reversible after aortic valve replacement.

Methods And Results: Thirty-nine patients with severe AS (symptomatic=25, asymptomatic=14) with normal LV ejection fraction and no significant coronary artery disease and 20 age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent cardiac 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging for the determination of steatosis (myocardial triglyceride content) and cardiac function, including circumferential strain (measured by magnetic resonance tagging).

Myocardial tissue characterization using magnetic resonance noncontrast t1 mapping in hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy.

Background: Noncontrast magnetic resonance T1 mapping reflects a composite of both intra- and extracellular signal. We hypothesized that noncontrast T1 mapping can characterize the myocardium beyond that achieved by the well-established late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) technique (which detects focal fibrosis) in both hypertrophic (HCM) and dilated (DCM) cardiomyopathy, by detecting both diffuse and focal fibrosis.

Methods And Results: Subjects underwent Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance imaging at 3T (28 HCM, 18 DCM, and 12 normals).

Exercise training in dilated cardiomyopathy improves rest and stress cardiac function without changes in cardiac high energy phosphate metabolism.

Objective: To determine the effects of short-term exercise training on cardiac function and metabolism during rest and physical exercise in patients with heart failure from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).

Design: Patients with DCM (n=15, age 58±2 years, NYHA class I-III) were studied before and after 8 weeks of cycle exercise for 20 min, five times per week.

Main Outcome Measures: Cardiac volumes, function and high energy phosphate metabolism were measured using cardiac magnetic resonance during rest and 7 min of acute physical exercise (leg-raising).

Prevalence of cardiomyopathy in asymptomatic patients with left bundle branch block referred for cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging.

The diagnostic evaluation of patients with isolated left bundle branch block (LBBB) is challenging due to limitations of several non-invasive tests. Our aim was to evaluate the diagnostic value of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) in asymptomatic patients with LBBB. Sixty-one asymptomatic patients with complete LBBB who were referred for CMR from January 2005 to November 2010 were identified.

Identification of a structurally distinct CD101 molecule encoded in the 950-kb Idd10 region of NOD mice.

Genes affecting autoimmune type 1 diabetes susceptibility in the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse (Idd loci) have been mapped using a congenic strain breeding strategy. In the present study, we used a combination of BAC clone contig construction, polymorphism analysis of DNA from congenic strains, and sequence mining of the human orthologous region to generate an integrated map of the Idd10 region on mouse chromosome 3. We found seven genes and one pseudogene in the 950-kb Idd10 region.