View clinical trials related to Cardiac Diseases.
Filter by:The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of a minimal intervention on risk perception of physical inactivity in patients with known coronary heart disease (CHD) and patients at risk for CHD. Therefore half of the patients (intervention group) get a personal feedback on their individual level of physical activity measured by pedometers and self-report questionnaires plus information about the risk factor 'physical inactivity' for heart diseases. Following the hypotheses the feedback should increase the patients risk perception of physical inactivity and furthermore increase physical activity.
The heart is essentially a hydraulic pump which ensures adequate delivery of blood through generating pressure and forward flow of blood. The energy delivered by the heart is uncommonly measured clinically, and todays gold standard involves placing a plastic catheter into the lung arteries. The investigators have developed an ultrasound based approach to calculate this energy without the need for catheters through the heart. This novel approach is called ultrapower. Ultrapower involves the instantaneous multiplication of the cardiac output and the arterial blood pressure. The study aims to use the ultrasound based approach to investigate Cardiac Power in the coronary artery bypass graft population.
To investigate the efficacy and safety of using the novel Tyto device for remote physical examination by co-investigators as compared to a standard medical physical examination by physicians.
Regular physical activity improves physical and mental health and reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity and premature death from any cause. Unfortunately the majority of adults are not active enough to reap these benefits. People who are inactive and at high risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes and dementia, and who may benefit from increased activity can be identified in primary care by combining standard risk tools. These high risk patients can be offered physical activity programmes that are designed to increase longterm adherence. Aerobic dance is an activity that combines physical, social and cognitive stimulation and allows easily adjusted intensity levels to meet individual needs. Engagement in an activity program also provides opportunities to offer advice on healthy nutrition and associated meal preparation skills. Information technology can be used to increase activity participation. Video materials can be produced to guide activity participation at home, thereby increasing overall activity participation. The investigators propose a feasibility study of a multimodal dance-based physical activity and nutrition intervention aimed at patients at high risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes and dementia, in primary care settings.
This study will be a retrospective study. The patient data from the electronic medical records and existing database will be collected and analyzed. Primary endpoints will be postoperative mortality (within 30 days) and overall complications and length of hospital stay. The secondary endpoints will be myocardial infarction, cardiac death, CHF, arrhythmia, ischemia, stroke, neurological complications, length of ICU stay, re-admission rate, infections, pulmonary complications, length of intubation time, length of ventilation time, and acute renal failure.
A growing interest in monitoring cardiac output (CO) non-invasively has emerged, however its determination has been difficult using the standard approaches. The aim of the study is to evaluate the accuracy and precision of pulse contour analysis (PCA) as compared to cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR).
Endostatin, a 20-kDa cleavage product of collagen XVIII, is a component of the extracellular matrix expressed in the basement membrane. As a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis, endostatin induces endothelial cell apoptosis and diminishes cell migration, adhesion and proliferation. Endostatin may stop the progression of atherosclerosis. Atherosclerotic heart disease involves unwanted tissue growth. By cutting off the blood supply from a plaque the likelihood of plaque rupture may eventually be reduced. Recent data indicates that the loss of collagen XVIII/endostatin is related to the enhancement of neo-vascularization and vascular permeability in atherosclerosis. Plaque neo-vascularization strongly correlates with the regional content of inflammatory cells. Furthermore, increased vascular permeability enhances lipid accumulation in the vessel walls, hence increasing foam cells. Therapeutic angiogenesis is a most promising strategy for the treatment of myocardial infarction. However, it remains unknown if and how endogenous angiogenesis inhibitors, such as endostatin, regulate angiogenesis in myocardial infarction. Rat models showed that after myocardial infarction endostatin neutralization displayed adverse left ventricular remodeling and severe heart failure compared with controls. Although angiogenesis was increased, tissue remodeling and interstitial fibrosis were further exaggerated in post-myocardial infarction hearts by endostatin neutralization. However, several studies suggest that endostatin may locally modulate coronary collateral formation by inhibiting collateral vessel formation in patients with ischemic heart disease. During treadmill exercise tests in healthy volunteers a significant increase in circulating endostatin levels can be observed. Exercise induces angiogenesis in cardiac and skeletal muscles by decreasing endostatin in the muscle tissues to increase blood flow to these metabolically active tissues. Thereby endostatin is released into the general circulation. In summary, endostatin might be a new weapon to fight against atherosclerotic progression by inhibiting neo-vascularization of atherosclerotic plaques.
- Background : Ephrin-B1 is part of the large Eph/Ephrin system which is involved in cell-cell comunication. The role of Ephrin-B1 has scarcely been studied in adulthood. Our team has shown that this protein is expressed in normal heart in mice and humans. In mice with deletion of the gene encoding Ephrin-B1, we have shown progressive development of dilated cardiomyopathy characterized by dramatic disorganization of cardiac tissue architecture and decreased heart rate variability. - Purpose: Ephrin-B1 protein was recently identified in human heart but its putative role remains unknown. In knockout mice, deletion of efn gene is associated with abnormalities in cardiac architecture linked to defects in cell-cell tight junctions. From a functional point of view, mice develop a dilated cardiomyopathy and exhibit decreased heart rate variability in the frequency domain. The purpose of this study is to assess if Ephrin-B1 expression is regulated in human heart and if expression level correlates with heart rate variability. - Abstract: Thirty patients suffering from cardiac disease needing surgery will be included and separated in two groups according to pressure levels in right auricle /and or pulmonary artery. Ephrin-B1 expression will be assessed in right appendages at both the transcriptional (quantitative PCR) and protein (Western blot) levels. Furthermore, the putative relationship between Ephrin-B1 expression and heart rate variability (24 hours ECG recordings) will be investigated.
The cardiac output (CO) is an important parameter in the diagnosis and therapy of cardiac diseases. The current standard methods for the determination of the CO, however, are either invasive (e.g. right heart catheterization) or technically expendable and expensive (magnetic resonance tomography, MRT). Therefore the aim of the study at hand was to evaluate the electrical velocimetry technique as a new method for determining the CO and to compare this new technique with the Inert Gas Rebreathing Method and with the Magnetic Resonance Tomography
A new, innovative software image processing method, wide beam reconstruction (WBR), utilizes resolution recovery and incorporates Poisson noise-reduction into the reconstruction process of NM images. This method facilitates the reconstruction of low count density myocardial perfusion SPECT images. Preliminary research indicates that SPECT acquisition time consequently can be reduced by 60% (less than 5 minutes) for rest and by 75% (just over 3 minutes) for stress, while tomographic image quality is maintained, or even improved. Such a decrease in image acquisition time decreases patient discomfort during the tomographic acquisition, decreases the opportunity for patient motion, and improves laboratory efficiency.