Atrial fibrillation-related stroke in women: Evidence and inequalities in epidemiology, mechanisms, clinical presentation, and management.

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common clinical arrhythmia and one of the major causes of stroke, heart failure, sudden death, and cardiovascular morbidity. Despite substantial advances in (interventional) rhythm control treatment during the last decade, anticoagulation for stroke prevention remains a major component of AF treatment.

Hypothesis: There are important sex-specific differences in AF-related stroke, resulting from sex-specific mechanisms and therapeutic differences.

Fast Progressing His-Purkinje Conduction Disturbances in a Myotonic Dystrophy Pacient.

Myotonic dystrophy leads to multiple systemic complications and the age of death is earlier in myotonic dystrophy patients than in the general population. These patients have a high frequency of sudden death related to respiratory failure, cardiac arrhythmias and in particular to cardiac conduction disturbances. Prophylactic pacemaker implantation should be considered in asymptomatic myotonic dystrophy patients, which in the early stages of disease present minor conduction disturbances in 12-leads ECG.

Between Scylla and Charybdis: long-term cardiovascular complications after radiotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Radiotherapy, an established treatment for local and regional control in neoplastic disease, may have several acute, subacute and chronic side effects. One of the main concerns about mediastinal radiotherapy is the occurrence of long-term cardiovascular complications after oncological treatment. This is an important issue--especially for thoracic neoplasms with long-term survival, such as breast cancer or Hodgkin's lymphoma--because of the increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Utility of QRS width and echocardiography parameters in an integrative algorithm for selecting heart failure patients with cardiac dyssynchrony.

Background: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is an effective treatment in dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). However, it has been demonstrated that mechanical dyssynchrony is not related to electrical dyssynchrony. We hypothesized that a new QRS width cutoff could be easier to use as a first step in the selection of patients with inter- and intraventricular dyssynchrony.