Publications by authors named "Laura Filippetti"

Echocardiographic evaluation of the cardiopulmonary unit is difficult in case of tricuspid regurgitation (TR) and combined echocardiographic parameters could be useful. This study aimed to assess the variation of simple and combined echocardiographic parameters analysing the cardiopulmonary unit according to the severity of TR. TR was graded according to Hahn's classification in 179 patients.

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Background: Assessment of the athlete's heart is challenging because of a phenotypic overlap between reactive physiological adaptation and pathological remodelling. The potential value of myocardial deformation remains controversial in identifying early cardiomyopathy.

Aim: To identify the echocardiographic phenotype of athletes using advanced two-dimensional speckle tracking imaging, and to define predictive factors of subtle left ventricular systolic dysfunction.

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Myocardial somatostatin PET uptake is observed not only in most patients with acute myocarditis (AM) but also in some oncology patients referred for routine somatostatin PET. This raises concerns about the specificity of somatostatin PET for detecting myocarditis. The current study aims to identify factors associated with the detection of myocardial uptake on somatostatin PET scans recorded for oncology indications and differential PET criteria that characterize myocardial uptake in AM patients.

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Background: Per-procedural severe mitral regurgitation is a rare complication in concomitant surgical ventricular restoration and postinfarction ventricular septal rupture repair. It is challenging to discover the underlying etiology and adopt an appropriate strategy, in particular, in a high-risk patient.

Case Presentation: Semi-emergent surgical ventricular restoration combined with ventricular septal rupture closure and coronary artery bypassing was performed in a 67-year-old male patient.

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Background: Structural changes and myocardial fibrosis quantification by cardiac imaging have become increasingly important to predict cardiovascular events in patients with mitral valve prolapse (MVP). In this setting, it is likely that an unsupervised approach using machine learning may improve their risk assessment.

Objectives: This study used machine learning to improve the risk assessment of patients with MVP by identifying echocardiographic phenotypes and their respective association with myocardial fibrosis and prognosis.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study looked at how heart muscle movement, using a special test called strain echocardiography, can help understand heart problems in patients with mitral valve prolapse (MVP) and severe heart rhythms.
  • Mitral valve prolapse is when a valve in the heart doesn't work properly, and while it usually isn't serious, some people can have dangerous heart rhythms.
  • The study found that patients with severe heart rhythms had different heart muscle movement patterns, which might help doctors predict who is at risk for these dangerous heart conditions.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to identify new prognostic factors that could predict outcomes in Staphylococcus aureus infective endocarditis (SaIE), which has a high mortality rate.
  • Researchers reviewed medical records of 30 patients and found 56 candidate prognostic factors, ultimately narrowing it down to three significant factors: prior use of NSAIDs, non-performance of valve surgery when needed, and decrease in vegetation size on antibiotic treatment.
  • If confirmed in further studies, these factors could enhance patient management and potentially lower the lethality associated with SaIE.
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Unlabelled: Somatostatin receptors are overexpressed by inflammatory cells but not by cardiac cells, under normal conditions. This study assesses the detection of acute myocarditis by the ECG-triggered digital-PET imaging of somatostatin receptors (Ga-DOTATOC-PET), as compared to Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) imaging, which is the reference diagnostic method in this setting.

Methods: Fourteen CMR-defined acute myocarditis patients had a first 15-minutes ECG-triggered Ga-DOTATOC PET recording, 4.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study on infective endocarditis (IE) highlighted significant differences between patients with and without underlying cardiac conditions (UCC), finding that those without UCC were generally younger and had distinct comorbidities like malignancy and immune deficiency.
  • Patients without UCC experienced more severe complications, such as larger vegetations, higher rates of valve issues, and a greater likelihood of requiring valve surgery.
  • Despite the increased severity of their condition, in-hospital mortality rates were similar between both groups, suggesting that age and specific health conditions influenced the disease course rather than mortality outcomes.
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Introduction: This observational CMR study aims to characterize left-ventricular (LV) damage, which may be specifically attributed to COVID-19 and is distant in time from the acute phase, through serial CMR performed during the first year in patients with no prior cardiac disease.

Methods: This study included consecutive patients without any prior history of cardiac disease but with a peak troponin-Ic > 50 ng/ml at the time of the first COVID-wave. All had a CMR in the first months after the acute phase, and some had an additional CMR at the end of the first year to monitor LV function, remodeling, and abnormalities evocative of myositis and myocarditis - i.

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Background: The assessment of severity of aortic regurgitation (AR) by transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) remains challenging in routine practice. Contemporary guidelines recommend cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) in patients with significant disease and suboptimal TTE images. The objective of this study was to assess the role of CMR in the evaluation of severity of AR and to compare both modalities in the quantification of regurgitation and left ventricular volumes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This CMR study investigates if changes in systemic vascular resistance (SVR) can explain long-term variations in left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (EF) in individuals without known heart disease, particularly those with hypertension and obesity.
  • - The study tracked 118 participants over an average of 5.2 years, finding that significant changes in EF were linked more closely to SVR changes than to blood pressure variations, highlighting a relationship between vascular function and heart performance.
  • - The research emphasizes the importance of measuring LV afterload when assessing EF in populations with vascular issues rather than attributing changes solely to heart muscle function, suggesting that SVR should be a key focus in such evaluations.
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This study aims to assess the changes in cardiovascular remodeling attributable to bodyweight gain in a middle-aged abdominal obesity cohort. A remodeling worsening might explain the increase in cardiovascular risk associated with a dynamic of weight gain. Seventy-five middle-aged subjects (56 ± 5 years, 38 women) with abdominal obesity and no known cardiovascular disease underwent MRI-based examinations at baseline and at a 6.

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Background: Despite guidelines describing the optimal diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for patients with suspected cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) infections, their management is often challenging.

Aims: To describe our diagnostic and therapeutic practices for suspected CIED infection, and to compare them with European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) guidelines.

Methods: Patients hospitalized in the tertiary care Nancy University Hospital for suspected CIED infection from 2014 to 2019 were included retrospectively.

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Unlabelled: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common cause of non-traumatic neurological disability in young adults. It has effects at different levels: physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive and social, with a great variety of signs and symptoms. In particular, spasticity contributes to reducing the motor performance of patients with MS, causing pain, reduction in distance walked and limitations in social life.

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Marfan syndrome is a connective tissue disease that rarely presents first with peripheral aortic aneurysms. We highlight the case of a young man with Marfan syndrome presenting with an abdominal aortic aneurysm due to a heterozygous fibrillin-1 gene mutation.

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Unlabelled: Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is an autosomal dominant neurocutaneous disease which confers an increased risk of malignant tumour development. Relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. The coexistence of multiple sclerosis and NF1 is rare but has been reported.

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Background: Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is a frequent disease that can be complicated by mitral regurgitation (MR), heart failure, arterial embolism, rhythm disorders, and death. Left ventricular (LV) replacement myocardial fibrosis, a marker of maladaptive remodeling, has been described in patients with MVP, but the implications of this finding remain scarcely explored. We aimed at assessing the prevalence, pathophysiological and prognostic significance of LV replacement myocardial fibrosis through late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) by cardiac magnetic resonance in patients with MVP.

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Valvular heart disease (VHD) is frequently accompanied by pulmonary hypertension (PH). In asymptomatic patients, PH is rare, although the exact prevalence is unknown and mainly stems from the severity of the VHD and the presence of diastolic dysfunction. PH can also be depicted during exercise echocardiography.

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Heart failure is a pathology associated with severe morbidity and mortality. In this large field, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) appears to be an increasing global health problem; it should be considered as a progressive syndrome, characterized by complex mechanisms of systemic and cardiac adaptation that vary over time, particularly with ageing. Multiple biological phenotypes contribute to the heterogeneous clinical syndrome.

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Background: The analysis of right ventriculo-arterial coupling (RVAC) from pressure-volume loops is not routinely performed. RVAC may be approached by the combination of right heart catheterization (RHC) pressure data and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR)-derived right ventricular (RV) volumetric data. RV pressure and volume measurements by Doppler and three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) allows another way to approach RVAC.

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Hypereosinophilia may be due to several aetiologies. Cardiac complications are not uncommon, whatever the causes. Clinical presentations of hypereosinophilic cardiac diseases may vary widely from asymptomatic form to fatal necrotic myocarditis or irreversible restrictive cardiomyopathy.

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