Five-year follow-up by transesophageal echocardiographic studies in primary antiphospholipid syndrome.

This prospective study describes valvular abnormalities assessed by transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in patients with primary antiphospholipid syndrome (APLS) over a 5-year follow-up. Of the 56 patients with APLS evaluated at baseline, 47 (84%) had repeat TEE examinations, including 3 patients who died before the end of the follow-up. The first TEE study showed cardiac involvement (thickening or vegetations and embolic sources) in 34 subjects (61%), with mitral valve thickening, the most common abnormality, present in 30 patients (54%).

Noninvasive quantification of respiratory modulation on left ventricular size and stroke volume.

To noninvasively explore the complex interactions between heart rate, left ventricular (LV) stroke volume (SV) and respiration, different techniques were proposed and applied to the beat-to-beat measurements of end-diastolic (ED), end-systolic (ES) volumes and SV, obtained from echocardiographic acoustic quantification LV volume signal. Data were obtained from eight patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM, age 60 +/- 2, mean +/- SE), and from 11 age-matched healthy volunteers (N, age 63 +/- 2). Spectral analysis showed an increase in HF power in DCM, both in ED (in ml2, 58 +/- 18 versus 19 +/- 5 in N) and in SV (in ml2, 55 +/- 12 versus 17 +/- 5 in N), together with an increase in total power (in ml2, ED: 119 +/- 31 in DCM versus 48 +/- 9 in N; SV: 88 +/- 17 in DCM versus 31 +/- 8 in N).