Cor et Vasa

Left ventricular hypertrophy constitutes an essential risk factor for sudden death, myocardial infarction and heart failure. The death rates of patients with ECG-demonstrated cardiac hypertrophy are 4.8 times as high as those of healthy subjects. Cardiac hypertrophy is associated with a substantially increased incidence of ventricular arrhythmias. The condition is treatable in most patients. While the most effective group of drugs for controlling cardiac hypertrophy are ACE inhibitors; methyldopa, calcium antagonists, and beta-blockers have also proved useful in the management of cardiac hypertrophy in hypertension...

The authors summarize the early results of coronary angioplasty in 234 patients, with special emphasis on complications. The follow-up group included 182 men (77.8%) and 52 women (22.2%) with a mean age of 52 (34-74) years. Single-artery involvement prevailed (216 patients, 92.3%); multiple artery involvement was diagnosed in 18 patients (7.7%). Overall, dilatation was performed in 273 stenoses; of this number, 213 procedures were successful (78.0%). The primary success rate in the whole group was 76.9% (180/234)...

The prevalence of insulin resistance and/or glucose intolerance (IR/GI) was evaluated in 98 patients with essential hypertension of various stages: a) Almost 35% of them had an abnormal or diabetic glucose tolerance test and 47% of the total number suffered from either/both IR/GI. b) The prevalence was high from stage I essential hypertension, which pointed to an early development of IR/GI, and no further increase during the development of hypertension was found if no antihypertensive drugs influencing IR/GI were taken by the patients...

34 patients with ventricular dysfunction (18 in NYHA class II and 16 in NYHA class III heart failure) whose clinical status was stabilized by diuretics and systemic vasodilators, entered a randomized trial to compare the effects of short-term oral digoxin and active placebo on left ventricular diastolic function, non invasively evaluated by echo-Doppler transmitral left ventricular filling flow. At baseline patients were subdivided by reversal--the ratio of peak early (E) and late (A) transmitral filling velocities--E/A < 1 (group I) or normal--E/A > or = 1 (group II) echo-Doppler E/A ratio; group II exhibited a shorter deceleration time (125 +/- 20 ms vs 198 +/- 38 ms, p > 0...

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The authors, presenting a group of 23 cardiac myxomas over the past 20 years, provide a review of the most common clinical symptoms, such as mitral valve stenosis, dyspnoea, tachycardia, and/or myxoma mass embolizing the systemic circulation as well as the diagnostic modalities available, echocardiography and angiography in particular. Based on the histologic picture and the ultrastructure. They assume that, histogenetically, cardiac myxomas are true neoplasms from undifferentiated mesenchymal cells. Echocardiographic confirmation of cardiac myxomas warrants immediate surgical removal of the neoplasm...

Periodic heart rate fluctuation depends on the oscillation of sympathetic and vagal activation of the heart. Periodic retardation and acceleration of heart rate related to respiration and to blood pressure changes can be registered on the ECG as the "variability of R-R intervals". Testing procedures of the variability of R-R intervals at rest, during deep breathing, daily activities, during exercise and other stress tests are described in the paper. For the evaluation of the R-R interval's variability, current statistical methods are used (e...

Using sonography, the common carotid artery was examined in patients with hyperlipoproteinaemia and in controls. In 21 controls, the intima was present in 62%, intimal thickness was 0.41 +/- 0.14 mm. In patients with familial hypercholesterolaemia free of ischaemic heart disease (46 patients), the intima was demonstrable in 89%, intimal thickness was 0.74 +/- 0.21 mm. In patients with ischaemic heart disease (19 patients), the intima could be demonstrated in 100%, its thickness was 0.84 +/- 0.31 mm. In 21 patients with familial combined hyperlipoproteinaemia, the intima was present in 90%, intimal thickness was 0...

The efficacy of adenosine triphosphate (ATP, Spofa) in controlling supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) was assessed in a group of 20 consecutive patients with this condition. Sinus rhythm was restored in a total of 19 patients (95% efficacy). SVT termination was followed, in a full 40% of patients, by asystole with a mean duration of 8.6 seconds; there were, however, no sequelae and no measures had to be taken. ATP can be regarded as a welcome addition to the current range of pharmacological options available for the treatment of SVT...

There is a pressing need for a non-invasive marker of restenosis following percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty. Computerised measurement of restenosis has not been used in conjunction with exercise test variables reflecting maximum exercise capacity. Thus we investigated thirty consecutive patients undergoing repeat coronary angiography for restenosis who had a satisfactory symptom limited exercise test. Exercise test variables namely ST segment depression, maximum exercise tolerance and rate/pressure product were correlated with the percentage stenosis measured by videodensitometry...

With increasing knowledge of coronary heart disease (CHD) epidemiology, it has become apparent that preventive treatment of high-risk individuals--the high-risk strategy--will reduce individual risk but is insufficient by itself to reduce the burden of CHD in the population as a whole because more than half of the future victims of CHD have risk factor levels below the high range, leaving these persons unprotected. Since the relationship between risk factors and clinical CHD risk is continuous in most instances, without a sharp dividing line between high and low risk, the aim of optimal preventive action must be to shift the entire risk factor distribution curves to the left, in order to reduce the number of persons in the upper end of the distribution on the right...

Review of major activities in Czechoslovak cardiology before the second world war and afterwards until the present time. International relations, achievements, problems and failures were closely linked with the Czechoslovak Society of Cardiology, established in 1929.

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