Occurrence of peripheral arterial disease in a Belgian cohort of patients with cardiovascular history of atherothrombosis.

Rationale: Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is an underestimated and under diagnosed disease with as much as 60% of the patients having at least one other vascular bed affected.

Purpose: The study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of PAD defined by different means in high risk Belgian ambulatory patients.

Methods: Participating physicians were to include a least six consecutive high risk ambulant patients for atherothrombosis.

Atrial flutter: historical background.

For five decades, the mechanism of atrial flutter remained controversial, with protagonists and antagonists of circus movement versus ectopic focus theories. The development of clinical electrophysiology in the 1970s and the observations made by many authors in various canine heart models supported the concept of atrial flutter as a reentrant wave confined to the right atrium. It was established that, in the common type of atrial flutter, the activation wavefront proceeds in a cranial direction over the right atrial septum and descends on the right atrial free wall in the caudal direction.