cardiomiopathy

Worldwide, adrenaline is considered the first choice therapy in the international guidelines for the management of anaphylaxis. However, the heart and cardiovascular apparatus are strongly involved in anaphylaxis; for that reason, there are some cardiac conditions and certain anaphylaxis patterns that make epinephrine use problematic without adequate heart monitoring. The onset of Kounis syndrome, takotsubo cardiopathy, or the paradoxical anaphylaxis require great attention in the management of anaphylaxis and adrenaline administration by clinicians, who should be aware of the undervalued evolution of anaphylaxis and the potential cardiologic complications of epinephrine administration...

BACKGROUND: N-terminal pro brain-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is a practical biomarker in the clinical pathologies where the ventricle is under stress and particularly stretched in the general population. The study aims to compare the value of NT-proBNP and its importance in the prognosis and severity of the cases involving pregnant patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and cardiovascular risk factors to those of low-risk pregnant patients, mainly by analysing their symptoms, administered medication, days of hospitalization and severity of the viral disease...

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism of cell adaptation to metabolic and environmental stress. It mediates the disposal of protein aggregates and dysfunctional organelles, although non-conventional features have recently emerged to broadly extend the pathophysiological relevance of autophagy. In baseline conditions, basal autophagy critically regulates cardiac homeostasis to preserve structural and functional integrity and protect against cell damage and genomic instability occurring with aging...

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Chagas disease (ChD) affects millions of people worldwide, being endemic in Latin America and emerging in the United States and Europe. Classically described as targeting the heart and gastrointestinal tract, Trypanosoma cruzi parasitism leads to structural and pro-inflammatory changes in the adipose tissue and pancreas. The effects of these changes on insulin resistance (IR), beta cell dysfunction, diabetes mellitus (DM),and metabolic syndrome (MS) are unclear. We aim to evaluate the association of ChD with DM, IR, beta cell dysfunction and MS in the baseline of multi-centric cohort study 'Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health' (ELSA-Brasil)...

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to follow the long-term progression of diabetic cardiomyopathy by combining cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) and molecular analysis. BACKGROUND: The evolution of diabetic cardiomyopathy to heart failure affects patients'morbidity and mortality. CMR is the gold standard to assess cardiac remodeling, but there is a lack of markers linked to the mechanism of diabetic cardiomyopathy progression. METHODS: Five-year longitudinal study on patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) enrolled in the CECSID (Cardiovascular Effects of Chronic Sildenafil in Men With Type 2 Diabetes) trial compared with nondiabetic age-matched controls...

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate autoptic histopathological findings of arrhythmogenic ventricular cardiomyopathy (AVC) as major cause of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in young adults. BACKGROUND: According to Heart Rhythm Society (HRS)'s international consensus, histological criteria for AVC diagnosis include a progressive myocardial atrophy of the right ventricle characterized by a transmural fatty or fibrofatty replacement in a segmental or diffuse pattern (residual myocytes <60 % vs 60-75 % by morphometric analysis) explaining the electrical instability with increased risk of SCD...

INTRODUCTION: Laparoscopic adrenalectomy is a treatment option in patients with Cushing's syndrome. Preoperative comorbities as well as surgical and anesthesiological difficulties can make the procedure challenging. PRESENTATION OF THE CASE: We present the case of a 53-year-old obese man diagnosed with Cushing's syndrome, also suffering from other endocrine pathologies, neurofibromatosis type 2, cardiomiopathy with severe hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS)...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to review how cardiac MRI provides the clinician with detailed information about the hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) phenotypes, assessing its morphological and functional consequences. CONCLUSION: An understanding of cardiac MRI manifestations of HCM phenotypes will aid early diagnosis recognition and its functional consequences. TEACHING POINTS: • The phenotypic variability of HCM expands beyond myocardial hypertrophy, to include morphological and functional manifestations, ranging from subtle anomalies to remodelling of the LV with progressive dilatation and thinning of its wall...

Long-term ECG monitoring has become nowadays an indispensable technology for prevention, management and treatment of many cardiac issues. Today long-term ECG monitoring is achievable through loop recorders and cardiac devices like pacemaker, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and cardiac resynchronization therapy device-defibrillators, all of which associated with remote monitoring. Targeted long-term ECG monitoring patients who have recurrent non-documented episodes of palpitations, unexplained episodes of syncope, cryptogenic stroke or patients with a cardiomyopathy needing a risk stratification, may benefit from long-term ECG monitoring...

BACKGROUND: Diabetic Cardiomyopathy (DC) has been defined as a distinct entity characterized by the presence of diastolic or systolic cardiac dysfunction in a diabetic patient in the absence of other causes for Cardiomyopathy, such as coronary artery disease (CAD), hypertension (HTN), or valvular heart disease. Diabetes affects every organ in the body and cardiovascular disease accounts for two-thirds of the mortality in the diabetic population. Diabetes-related heart disease occurs in the form of coronary artery disease (CAD), cardiac autonomic neuropathy or DC...

Aims: His bundle pacing has shown to prevent detrimental effects from right ventricular apical pacing (RVA) and proved to resynchronize many conduction disturbances cases. However, the extent of His bundle pacing resynchronization is limited. An optimized stimulation waveform could expand this limit when implemented in His bundle pacing sets. In this work, we temporarily implemented RVA and Non-selective His bundle pacing with a biphasic anodal-first waveform (AF-nHB) and compared their effects against sinus rhythm (SR)...

Objective: Despite the improvement in ventricular assist device (VAD) therapy in adults and in adolescents, in infant population only Berlin Heart EXCOR (BHE) is licensed as long term VAD to bridge children to Heart Transplantation (HTx). Particularly demanding in terms of morbidity and mortality are smallest patients namely the ones implanted in the first year of life or with a lower body surface area. This work aims at retrospective reviewing a single center experience in using BHE in children with a body weight under 10 kg...

Myofibrillar myopathy (MFM) is a group of inherited muscular disorders characterized by myofibrils dissolution and abnormal accumulation of degradation products. So far causative mutations have been identified in nine genes encoding Z-disk proteins, including αB-crystallin (CRYAB), a small heat shock protein (also called HSPB5). Here, we report a case study of a 63-year-old Polish female with a progressive lower limb weakness and muscle biopsy suggesting a myofibrillar myopathy, and extra-muscular multisystemic involvement, including cataract and cardiomiopathy...

Metformin is a common medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, especially in obese subjects. Clinical studies show that, in addition to the lowering effect of blood glucose, metformin reduces cardiovascular risk, does not induce weight gain and additionally, provides a unique safety strategy and efficacy in patients with diabetes and heart disease. However, this treatment is not without risks. The most feared metabolic complication is lactic acidosis that often occurs with complex and severe clinical symptoms and is associated with a high mortality risk...

Takotsubo cardiomiopathy (TTC) (known also as "ampulla cardiomyopathy," "apical ballooning" or "broken heart syndrome") is connected with a temporary systolic left ventricular dysfunction without the culprit coronary lesion. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy was first described in 1990 in Japan after octopus trapping pot with a round bottom and narrow neck similar in shape to left ventriculogram in TTC patients. The occurrence of TTC is usually precipitated by a stressful event with a clinical presentation mimicking myocardial infarction: chest pain, ST-T segment elevation or T-wave inversion, a rise in cardiac troponin, and contractility abnormalities in echocardiography...

Radiotherapy is one of the main methods of cancer treatment alone or in combination with chemotherapy. It is applied in about 60% of oncological patients. However, in spite of its clinical usefulness, radiotherapy is associated with a high risk of radiation-induced side effects, including dermatitis, enteritis, cystitis, pericarditis, pneumonia or depression, sexual function disorders, cardiomiopathy, coronary heart disease, anomalies of heart valves and development of second malignant tumor. The early diagnosis and proper treatment of radiation-induced side effects have a major impact on patients` quality of life and future prognosis...

BACKGROUND: Response to cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) remains challenging. Pacing from multiple sites of the left ventricle (LV) has shown promising results. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to systematically compare the acute hemodynamic effects of multipoint pacing (MPP) by means of a quadripolar lead with conventional biventricular (BiV) pacing. METHODS: Twenty-nine patients (23 men; mean age 72 ± 12 years; LV ejection fraction 29% ± 7%; 15 with ischemic cardiomyopathy, 17 with left bundle branch block; mean QRS 183 ± 23 ms) underwent CRT implantation...

BACKGROUND: Chagas disease (CD) is endemic in Central and South America, Mexico and even in some areas of the United States. However, cases have been increasingly recorded also in non-endemic countries. The estimated number of infected people in Europe is in a wide range of 14000 to 181000 subjects, mostly resident in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Retrospective, observational study describing the characteristics of patients with CD who attended the Centre for Tropical Diseases (Negrar, Verona, Italy) between 2005 and 2013...

Mechanical circulatory support devices have been increasingly used for long-term support. We reviewed outcomes in all patients supported with a SynCardia total artificial heart (TAH) for more than 1 year to assess its safety in long-term support. As of December 2011, all 47 patients who received the TAH from 10 centers worldwide were included in this retrospective study. Clinical data were collected on survival, infections, thromboembolic and hemorrhagic events, device failures, and antithrombotic therapy. The mean age of patients was 50 ± 1...