Impact of supervised exercise on skeletal muscle blood flow and vascular function measured with MRI in patients with peripheral artery disease.

Supervised exercise is a common therapeutic intervention for patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD), however, the mechanism underlying the improvement in claudication symptomatology is not completely understood. The hypothesis that exercise improves microvascular blood flow is herein tested via temporally resolved magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurement of blood flow and oxygenation dynamics during reactive hyperemia in the leg with the lower ankle-brachial index. One hundred and forty-eight subjects with PAD were prospectively assigned to standard medical care or 3 mo of supervised exercise therapy.

Cognition and Cerebral Infarction in Older Adults After Surgical Aortic Valve Replacement.

Background: Aortic valve replacement (AVR) for calcific aortic stenosis is associated with high rates of perioperative stroke and silent cerebral infarcts on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but cognitive outcomes in elderly AVR patients compared with individuals with cardiac disease who do not undergo surgery are uncertain.

Methods: One hundred ninety AVR patients (mean age 76 ± 6 years) and 198 non-surgical participants with cardiovascular disease (mean age 74 ± 6 years) completed comprehensive cognitive testing at baseline (preoperatively) and 4 to 6 weeks and 1 year postoperatively. Surgical participants also completed perioperative stroke evaluations, including postoperative brain MRI.

What Makes New Ischemic Lesions Symptomatic after Aortic Valve Replacement?

Background: Acute cerebral infarctions on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are common after cardiothoracic surgery. However, most are asymptomatic and we aimed to identify features associated with clinical stroke symptoms.

Methods: Patients over 65 years of age undergoing surgical aortic valve replacement (AVR) for calcific stenosis were prospectively recruited (N = 196).

Pathogenesis and Risk Factors for Cerebral Infarct After Surgical Aortic Valve Replacement.

Background And Purpose: Stroke is a potentially devastating complication of cardiac surgery. Identifying predictors of radiographic infarct may lead to improved stroke prevention for surgical patients.

Methods: We reviewed 129 postoperative brain magnetic resonance imagings from a prospective study of patients undergoing surgical aortic valve replacement.

Multiparametric assessment of vascular function in peripheral artery disease: dynamic measurement of skeletal muscle perfusion, blood-oxygen-level dependent signal, and venous oxygen saturation.

Background: Endothelial dysfunction present in patients with peripheral artery disease may be better understood by measuring the temporal dynamics of blood flow and oxygen saturation during reactive hyperemia than by conventional static measurements.

Methods And Results: Perfusion, Intravascular Venous Oxygen saturation, and T2* (PIVOT), a recently developed MRI technique, was used to measure the response to an ischemia-reperfusion paradigm in 96 patients with peripheral artery disease of varying severity and 10 healthy controls. Perfusion, venous oxygen saturation SvO2, and T2* were each quantified in the calf at 2-s temporal resolution, yielding a dynamic time course for each variable.

Commissions and omissions are dissociable aspects of everyday action impairment in schizophrenia.

Prior research using performance-based assessment of functional impairment has informed a novel neuropsychological model of everyday action impairment in dementia in which omission errors (i.e., failure to complete task steps) dissociate from commission errors (i.

Stroke after aortic valve surgery: results from a prospective cohort.

Background: The incidence and impact of clinical stroke and silent radiographic cerebral infarction complicating open surgical aortic valve replacement (AVR) are poorly characterized.

Methods And Results: We performed a prospective cohort study of subjects ≥65 years of age who were undergoing AVR for calcific aortic stenosis. Subjects were evaluated by neurologists preoperatively and postoperatively and underwent postoperative magnetic resonance imaging.