Can the degree of coronary collateralization be used in clinical routine as a valid angiographic parameter of viability?

The success rate of percutaneous coronary artery intervention (PCI) of chronic total occlusion (CTO) lesions have increased in the recent years. However, improvement of function is only possible when significant myocardial viability is present. One of the most important factors of maintaining myocardial viability is the opening and development of collaterals.

Spongious hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in patients with mutations in the four-and-a-half LIM domain 1 gene.

Background: X-linked myopathy with postural muscle atrophy is a novel X-linked myopathy caused by mutations in the four-and-a-half LIM domain 1 gene (FHL1). Cardiac involvement was suspected in initial publications. We now systematically analyzed the association of the FHL1 genotype with the cardiac phenotype to establish a potential cardiac involvement in the disease.

Suggestion for a new image-based aortic wall stiffness evaluation technique: arterial wall stiffness index.

This study evaluated arterial wall stiffness independent of variant background blood pressure. A new technique-arterial wall stiffness index (AWSI)-was developed and its use verified. Intraluminal pressure and luminal volume were measured on eight swine descending aortas.

Magnetic resonance-derived 3-dimensional blood flow patterns in the main pulmonary artery as a marker of pulmonary hypertension and a measure of elevated mean pulmonary arterial pressure.

Background: Pulmonary hypertension is a disease characterized by an elevation in pulmonary arterial pressure that is diagnosed invasively via right heart catheterization. Such pathological altered pressures in the pulmonary vascular system should lead to changes in blood flow patterns in the main pulmonary artery.

Methods And Results: Forty-eight subjects (22 with manifest pulmonary hypertension, 13 with latent pulmonary hypertension, and 13 normal control subjects) underwent time-resolved 3D magnetic resonance phase-contrast imaging of the main pulmonary artery.

Forty-one-month follow-up of the Symmetry aortic connector system for proximal venous anastomosis.

Objective: Results of short- and midterm follow-up studies of the patency rate of the Symmetry aortic connector systems (St Jude Medical, Inc, Minneapolis, Minn) are controversial. Long-term follow-up studies are still lacking (so far, the longest mean follow-up period was 19 months). The aim of our study was (1) to evaluate the patency rate of this device over a longer time-period and (2) to analyze risk factors for graft occlusion.