Background: A disease management program can reduce mortality and rehospitalization of patients with heart failure (HF), but little is known about whether it can improve psychological status. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of home-based disease management on the psychological status of patients with HF.
Methods And Results: We randomly assigned patients hospitalized for HF to undergo either home-based disease management (n=79) or usual care (n=82).
J Cardiovasc Pharmacol
February 2012
Background: The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) of the whole body, including cardiac sympathetic nerves, is activated in patients with severe congestive systolic heart failure (CHF). Carvedilol can improve clinical status in such patients. This study aimed to determine how carvedilol acts on the SNS to improve CHF.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although many studies have demonstrated the efficacy of disease management programs on mortality, morbidity, quality of life (QOL), and medical cost in patients with heart failure (HF), no study has focused on psychological status as an outcome of disease management. In addition, very little information is available on the effectiveness of disease management programs in other areas than the USA and Europe.
Methods: The Japanese Heart Failure Outpatients Disease Management and Cardiac Evaluation (J-HOMECARE) is a randomized controlled trial in which 156 patients hospitalized with HF will be randomized into usual care or a home-based disease management arm receiving comprehensive advice and counseling by visiting nurses during the initial 2 months and telephone follow-up for the following 4 months after discharge.
Aims: Hypertension causes proteinuria and is an important factor in the progress of renal dysfunction. Increases in various proteins in urine are caused by malfunction of the glomerulus and the renal tubules. In the present study, the effects of hypertension on urinary excretion levels of various proteins were investigated to show the tubular cell malfunction in hypertensive patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci
January 2006
The clinical importance of simultaneous analysis of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylglycol with other human plasma catecholamines has been investigated to better understand the sympathetic nervous system. However, previous reports have had analytical difficulties with both resolution and extraction. The current study uses a reversed-phase triacontylsilyl silica (C30) column under the mobile phase condition without ion-pair reagents to separate catecholamines and their metabolites, with above 91% recoveries for intra-assay, above 85% for inter-assay, and less than 10% (n=5) coefficient of variation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: High blood pressure after a natural disaster is tentatively considered to be due to elevation of sympathetic nerve activity. A volcano in Japan erupted on March 31, 2000, and people living in the vicinity of the volcano were evacuated to safe shelters. We found that many evacuees developed high blood pressure while staying at evacuation centers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci
December 2003
Carvedilol is a beta/alpha1-adrenoceptor blocker. A sensitive method for measuring plasma levels of carvedilol in human administrated low doses is needed since its plasma concentration is low. We measured carvedilol and carvedilol M21-aglycon using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with electrochemical detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoronary vasodilator reserve (CVR) is reduced in patients with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). However, it is not clear whether there is any difference between the coronary blood flow increase in LVH caused by hypertension (HTH) and that caused by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) when the heart rate increases. In this study, 16 subjects with HTH, 10 subjects with HCM, and 10 subjects with normotension (NT) were investigated.
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