First-pass myocardial perfusion defect and delayed contrast enhancement in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy assessed with MRI.

Background: Gadolinium-diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA) enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is known to be useful for detecting myocardial injury. In this study, we used first-pass myocardial perfusion and delayed contrast-enhanced MRI to determine whether an abnormal signal intensity was related to the left ventricular regional contractile function in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Materials And Methods: Twelve patients with HCM participated in this study.

Relation of circulating interleukin-6 to left ventricular remodeling in patients with reperfused anterior myocardial infarction.

Background: During the remodeling process after myocardial infarction (MI), the expression of proinflammatory cytokines is enhanced in the myocardium. However, only a few clinical studies have been conducted on cytokine involvement in left ventricular (LV) remodeling after MI.

Hypothesis: Circulating proinflammatory cytokines may be involved in LV remodeling in patients with reperfused MI.

Attenuation of biventricular pressure gradients by cibenzo-line in an 18-year-old patient with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy.

An 18-year-old male patient with biventricular hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) had successful reduction of the pressure gradients by cibenzoline. At 11 months after birth, he was first diagnosed with cardiac murmurs and by the age of 5 years, he was diagnosed with subpulmonic infundibular stenosis with a pressure gradient of 10 mmHg by cardiac catheterization. At the age of 14, re-catherterization revealed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with isolated obstruction of the right ventricular outflow tract, with a pressure gradient of 70 mmHg, but no obstruction in the left ventricle.

Use of thallium-201 myocardial scintigraphy for the prediction of the response to beta-blocker therapy in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy.

This study was performed to evaluate whether thallium-201 myocardial scintigraphy (Tl-201) and iodine-123-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) myocardial scintigraphy could predict the usefulness of beta-blocker therapy in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Tl-201 and MIBG were performed in 47 patients before beta-blocker therapy. Patients were classified into group A, if their cardiac function improved, and group B, whose function remained unchanged.