1,720,974 research outputs found
Global and regional left ventricular function in post-operative tricuspid atresia: echocardiographic assessment.
Diastolic left ventricular function in patients with right ventricular pressure overload. A Doppler echocardiographic study.
Rome, AISC ed
L'ecocardiografia nella valutazione a lungo termine dell'intervento di Mustard per trasposizione completa delle grandi arterie
Valutazione angiocardiografica della funzione ventricolare sinistra in soggetti di età adulta e pediatrica con difetto interatriale tipo ostium secundum.
In order to assess left ventricular function in adults and children with ostium secundum atrial septal defect (ASD), 42 patients were examined by hemodynamic and angiocardiographic techniques. Patients were divided into three groups: Group I, 18 patients (mean age 42 years) with ASD; Group II, 14 patients (mean age 9 years) with ASD; Group III, 10 patients without cardiopathies who represented the control group. The following parameters of ventricular function were assessed: left ventricular end diastolic volume, global and regional left ventricular ejection fraction, left ventricular telediastolic pressure, mean pulmonary artery pressure, the ratio between pulmonary flow and systemic flow (QP/QS). Group I patients showed higher values of left ventricular end diastolic pressure and mean pulmonary artery pressure (16 +/- 0.6 mmHg; 33 +/- 1.5 mmHg) in relation to those of Group II (5.1 +/- 0.4 mmHg; 14 +/- 1.4 mmHg) and Group III (8.1 +/- 0.5 mmHg; 18 +/- 1.6 mmHg). In both cases the difference was statistically significant (p less than 0.001). A significant difference (p less than 0.05) was also noted in the incidence of mitral valve prolapse between patients in Group I and II. There was no significant difference (p = NS) however, between overall ejection fraction values in the three groups of patients; a lower regional ejection fraction (postero-basal segment) was recorded in Group I patients with mitral valve prolapse in comparison to patients in the other two groups (p less than 0.05)
Non invasive differentiation of ischemic and idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy using color Doppler echocardiography.
Coronary artery fistulas diagnosed by transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography
Prostate specific antigen (protein and mRNA) analysis in the differential diagnosis and staging of prostate cancer.
We analyzed complexed and free prostate-specific antigen (PSA), the free/total PSA and complexed/free PSA ratios, acid phosphatase, and prostatic phosphatase in serum from 36 patients with prostatic carcinoma and from 48 non-neoplastic control patients (20 with prostatitis and 28 with benign prostatic hyperplasia). Receiver-operating characteristic plots showed that serum PSA was the most efficient variable, singly used, in discriminating neoplastic from non-neoplastic patients. At a cut-off value of 10.0 ng/ml, serum PSA had a diagnostic sensitivity of 87% and a diagnostic specificity of 83%. In particular, three patients with prostatic carcinoma and twenty non-neoplastic controls had serum PSA levels of between 4 and 10 ng/ml. The subsequent analysis of the serum free/total PSA ratio, in this subgroup, using a cut-off level of 15%, allowed us to classify correctly all prostatic cancer cases and 18/20 non-neoplastic diseases. We next analyzed PSA mRNA in circulating cells using an improved reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction dot blot procedure, from six patients with prostatic carcinoma with distant metastases, and in seventeen with localized cancer. The analysis had a high sensitivity (up to dilutions 1:106 of total RNA from prostatic cancer cells vs total RNA from normal blood cells). The analysis revealed circulating micrometastatic cells in 3/6 (50%) cases of metastatic cancer and in 4/17 cases of localized cancer. To conclude, serum total PSA combined with the free/total PSA ratio is a very efficient algorithm in discriminating neoplastic from non-neoplastic prostatic diseases, while other mRNA species must be analyzed, in addition to PSA mRNA, in circulating cells to increase the efficiency in detecting metastatic prostatic cancer
Color Doppler evaluation of tricuspid insufficiency before mitral and aortic valve replacement.
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