QT interval and short-term outcome in acute heart failure.

Objective: To investigate the association of corrected QT (QTc) interval duration and short-term outcomes in patients with acute heart failure (AHF).

Methods: We analyzed AHF patients enrolled in 11 Spanish emergency departments (ED) for whom an ECG with QTc measurement was available. Patients with pace-maker rhythm were excluded.

[Quick and early diagnostic outpatient unit: an effective and efficient assistential model. Five years experience].

Background And Objective: To analyze the applicability of an out-patient Quick and Early Diagnostic Unit (QEDU) to evaluate patients with a potential life-threatening disorder on an out-patient basis.

Patients And Method: We analyzed prospectively all patients attended in the unit for five years (1997-2001). We compared patients with lung cancer and colorectal cancer admitted to hospital for conventional study versus patients studied at the unit.

Complex spatiotemporal phenological shifts as a response to rainfall changes.

•  Climatic warming produces significant gradual alterations in the timing of life-cycle events, and here we study the phenological effects of rainfall-pattern changes. •  We conducted ecosystem field experiments that partially excluded rain and runoff during the growing season in a Mediterranean forest and in a mediterranean shrubland. Studies of time-series of leaf-unfolding, flowering and fruiting over the last 50 yr in central Catalonia were carried out, and greenup onset in the Iberian Peninsula was monitored by satellite images.