Publications by authors named "Konstantinos Tampakis"

Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging could enable major advantages when guiding in real-time cardiac electrophysiology procedures offering high-resolution anatomy, arrhythmia substrate, and ablation lesion visualization in the absence of ionizing radiation. Over the last decade, technologies and platforms for performing electrophysiology procedures in a CMR environment have been developed. However, performing procedures outside the conventional fluoroscopic laboratory posed technical, practical and safety concerns.

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Background: Cavotricuspid isthmus pulsed-field ablation has been recently described to be safely performed despite initial reports on coronary arterial spasm while conduction disturbances as a complication of cavotricuspid isthmus ablation are rare and have been reported exclusively for radiofrequency catheter ablation.

Case Summary: A 64-year-old female patient with mechanical prosthetic valves underwent atrial fibrillation ablation using the pentaspline pulsed-field ablation catheter. At the end of the uneventful pulmonary vein isolation, an atrial tachycardia depended to the cavotricuspid isthmus occurred.

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Transfemoral access has been established as the gold standard approach for the majority of patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). However, in cases with anatomical difficulties or severely diffused peripheral arterial disease, alternative vascular access may be considered such as the transaxillary approach. We present the case of a 92-year-old gentleman with exertional dyspnea due to severe symptomatic aortic stenosis and a history of peripheral femoro-femoral bypass surgery, coronary arterial bypass surgery and a permanent dual-chamber left-side implanted pacemaker.

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Article Synopsis
  • Catheter ablation outcomes for non-paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) are generally unsatisfactory, and using a non-invasive method to assess atrial cardiomyopathy (ACM) in patients could help identify those who would respond best to treatment.
  • In a study of 295 patients who underwent cryoballoon-PVI, researchers measured the duration of amplified P-wave (APW) and found that those with a longer APW (≥150 ms) had a significantly higher recurrence rate of arrhythmia post-ablation compared to those with shorter APW (<150 ms).
  • The study concluded that measuring APW is a simple, non-invasive way to predict which patients are more likely to have worse outcomes after PVI
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Amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis is a multisystemic disease. Among its clinical manifestations, vein and arterial thromboembolic events are included. We report the unusual case of a 57-year-old female patient with AL amyloidosis presenting with an ST segment elevation myocardial infarction due to coronary artery embolization (CE).

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Chemotherapy regimens for breast cancer treatment can promote vascular dysfunction and lead to high cardiovascular risk. To investigate the cardiovascular burden and vascular inflammation in metastatic breast cancer patients receiving CDK 4/6 inhibitors or everolimus in addition to standard hormonal treatment. 22 consecutive female patients with metastatic breast cancer were enrolled.

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Article Synopsis
  • Electroanatomic mapping helps doctors find and treat fast heartbeats after someone has already had an ablation for a different heart problem called atrial fibrillation.
  • A 53-year-old man had a recurring fast heartbeat, and special mapping showed two important spots where the heartbeat was originating from.
  • By using new mapping technology and a treatment involving ethanol, the doctors were able to successfully stop the man's fast heartbeat, and he didn't have any more heart problems six months later.
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Inflammation and coagulation pathways are implicated in circulatory disease, but their interaction has not been completely deciphered yet. In this study, we investigated the association of coagulation and inflammation indices (activated clotting time [ACT], C-reactive protein, neutrophils) in hospitalized patients. Blood samples were drawn from consecutive patients at admission and at 48 hours for the assessment of the aforementioned parameters (n = 63).

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A 60-year-old patient presented with recalcitrant electrical storm (ES). Mild sedation and initial antiarrhythmic combination of esmolol and amiodarone did not affect the intensity of ES, which resulted in battery exhaustion. Oral propranolol in addition to intravenous amiodarone might be preferred in hemodynamically stable patients before interventional therapies.

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Purpose Of Review: Electrical storm (ES) is a life-threatening medical emergency of repetitive episodes of sustained ventricular arrhythmias within a short period. Its occurrence is associated with poor short- and long-term survival, even in patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD). Management of ES is challenging and mainly based on retrospective studies.

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Electrocardiographic (ECG) changes occurring several hours after the onset of acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema have been seldom described. The proposed explanatory mechanisms are various and not fairly established. In the absence of significant coronary artery disease, these ECG abnormalities could be attributed to mechanisms implicated in coronary microcirculatory dysfunction.

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Background: The present study aims to examine the association of the metabolic syndrome (MS) as well as of the triglyceride-glucose index (TyG-Index), a novel marker of insulin resistance, with subclinical atherosclerosis in a cohort of postmenopausal women, stratified according to their body mass index.

Methods: A total of 473 informed-consenting, non-diabetic postmenopausal women, without overt cardiovascular disease, were included in this study. We aimed to compare the association between structural and functional indices of subclinical atherosclerosis (i.

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Pericardial cysts are uncommon paracardiac lesions, usually located within the right cardiophrenic space. They usually do not cause symptoms and are detected by chance. Chest X-ray, echocardiography, and chest computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging are useful diagnostic tools.

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Purpose: To evaluate the effect of one-hand chest compression while continuously maintaining an open airway (OCOA) on rescue breath-associated hands-off time (RAHO) during single-lay rescuer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Methods: In this study, 193 CPR/automated external defibrillator certified lay rescuers were randomly allocated into 2 groups and were tested in a standard scenario using a mannequin. In control group (group A), the participants provided standard CPR.

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