scholarly journals A complicated diagnosis of constrictive pericarditis in a patient with atrial fibrillation - The importance of temporary pacing inducing regular heart rhythm during invasive hemodynamic study

Cor et Vasa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. e460-e464
Author(s):  
Zuzana Rücklová ◽  
Josef Marek ◽  
Tomáš Paleček ◽  
Štěpán Jeřábek ◽  
Tomáš Grus ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Andreas Zietzer ◽  
Baravan Al-Kassou ◽  
Paul Jamme ◽  
Verena Rolfes ◽  
Eva Steffen ◽  
...  

AbstractAtrial fibrillation (AF) is the most frequent arrhythmic disease in humans, which leads to thrombus formation in the left atrial appendage and stroke through peripheral embolization. Depending on their origin, large extracellular vesicles (lEVs) can exert pro-coagulant functions. In the present study, we investigated how different types of AF influence the levels of large EV subtypes in three distinct atrial localizations. Blood samples were collected from the right and left atrium and the left atrial appendage of 58 patients. 49% of the patients had permanent AF, 34% had non-permanent AF, and 17% had no history of AF. Flow cytometric analysis of the origin of the lEVs showed that the proportion of platelet-derived lEVs in the left atrial appendage was significantly higher in permanent AF patients compared to non-permanent AF. When we grouped patients according to their current heart rhythm, we also detected significantly higher levels of platelet-derived lEVs in the left atrial appendage (LAA) in patients with atrial fibrillation. In vitro studies revealed, that platelet activation with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) leads to higher levels of miR-222-3p and miR-223-3p in platelet-derived lEVs. Treatment with lEVs from LPS- or thrombin-activated platelets reduces the migration of endothelial cells in vitro. These results suggest that permanent atrial fibrillation is associated with increased levels of platelet-derived lEVs in the LAA, which are potentially involved in LAA thrombus formation.


Author(s):  
Bartosz Krzowski ◽  
Kamila Skoczylas ◽  
Gabriela Osak ◽  
Natalia Żurawska ◽  
Michał Peller ◽  
...  

Abstract Aims Mobile, portable ECG-recorders allow the assessment of heart rhythm in out-of-hospital conditions and may prove useful for monitoring patients with cardiovascular diseases. However, the effectiveness of these portable devices has not been tested in everyday practice. Methods and results A group of 98 consecutive cardiology patients (62 males [63%], mean age 69 ± 12.9 years) were included in an academic care centre. For each patient, a standard 12-lead electrocardiogram (SE), as well as a Kardia Mobile 6L (KM) and Istel (IS) HR-2000 ECG were performed. Two groups of experienced physycians analyzed obtained recordings. After analyzing ECG tracings from SE, KM, and IS, quality was marked as good in 82%, 80%, and 72% of patients, respectively (p < 0.001). There were no significant differences between devices in terms of detecting sinus rhythm (SE [60%, n = 59], KM [58%, n = 56], and IS [61%, n = 60]; SE vs KM p = 0.53; SE vs IS p = 0.76) and atrial fibrillation (SE [22%, n = 22], KM [22%, n = 21], and IS [18%, n = 18]; (SE vs KM p = 0.65; SE vs IS = 0.1). KM had a sensitivity of 88.1% and a specificity of 89.7% for diagnosing sinus rhythm. IS showed 91.5% and 84.6% sensitivity and specificity, respectively. The sensitivity of KM in detecting atrial fibrillation was higher than IS (86.4% vs. 77.3%), but their specificity was comparable (97.4% vs. 98.7%). Conclusion Novel, portable devices are useful in showing sinus rhythm and detecting atrial fibrillation in clinical practice. However, ECG measurements concerning conduction and repolarisation should be clarified with a standard 12-lead electrocardiogram.


Author(s):  
Hanbin Zhang ◽  
Li Zhu ◽  
Viswam Nathan ◽  
Jilong Kuang ◽  
Jacob Kim ◽  
...  

Early detection and accurate burden estimation of atrial fibrillation (AFib) can provide the foundation for effective physician treatment. New approaches to accomplish this have attracted tremendous attention in recent years. In this paper, we develop a novel passive smartwatch-based system to detect AFib episodes and estimate the AFib burden in an ambulatory free-living environment without user engagement. Our system leverages a built-in PPG sensor to collect heart rhythm without user engagement. Then, a data preprocessor module includes time-frequency (TF) analysis to augment features in both the time and frequency domain. Finally, a lightweight multi-view convolutional neural network consisting of 19 layers achieves the AFib detection. To validate our system, we carry out a research study that enrolls 53 participants across three months, where we collect and annotate more than 27,622 hours of data. Our system achieves an average of 91.6% accuracy, 93.0% specificity, and 90.8% sensitivity without dropping any data. Moreover, our system takes 0.51 million parameters and costs 5.18 ms per inference. These results reveal that our proposed system can provide a clinical assessment of AFib in daily living.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Noszczyk-Nowak ◽  
Marcin Michałek ◽  
Ewelina Kałuża ◽  
Alicja Cepiel ◽  
Urszula Pasławska

Abstract Introduction: The prevalence of arrhythmias in dogs and the influence of sex, breed, age, and body weight were analysed over a seven-year span. Material and Methods: In total, 1189 referrals for cardiological examination by electrocardiography were received at one academic centre in Poland between 2008 and 2014. The largest proportion of the examined dogs were cross-breeds with body weight below 25 kg (n = 153, 12.87%), followed by German Shepherds (n = 122, 10.26%), Labrador Retrievers (n = 68, 5.72%), Yorkshire Terriers (n = 63, 5.3%), and Boxers (n = 60, 5.05%). Retrospective analysis was made of 1201 standing or right recumbent electrocardiograms without pharmacological sedation. The prevalence of arrhythmias was examined in terms of sex, age, body weight, and breed of the dogs. Results: A total of 630 (52.46%) electrocardiograms showed no signs of arrhythmia, but 96 (7.99%) and 475 (39.55%) pointed to physiological and pathological arrhythmias respectively. The most commonly diagnosed type was atrial fibrillation with 33.68% incidence, followed by ventricular arrhythmias (28%), sinus pauses (27.58%), supraventricular arrhythmias (24%), and atrioventricular blocks (22.95%). Pathological arrhythmias were most commonly found in male dogs and in German Shepherds. Conclusions: Atrial fibrillation predominated, followed by premature ventricular complexes. Male dogs were generally more prone to heart rhythm disturbances.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessio Galli ◽  
Francesco Ambrosini ◽  
Federico Lombardi ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  

Holter monitors are tools of proven efficacy in diagnosing and monitoring cardiac arrhythmias. Despite the fact their use is widely prescribed by general practitioners, little is known about their evolving role in the management of patients with cryptogenic stroke, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, unexplained recurrent syncope and risk stratification in implantable cardioverter defibrillator or pacemaker candidates. New Holter monitoring technologies and loop recorders allow prolonged monitoring of heart rhythm for periods from a few days to several months, making it possible to detect infrequent arrhythmias in patients of all ages. This review discusses the advances in this area of arrhythmology and how Holter monitors have improved the clinical management of patients with suspected cardiac rhythm diseases.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva María Cirugeda-Roldán ◽  
Antonio Molina Picó ◽  
Daniel Novák ◽  
David Cuesta-Frau ◽  
Vaclav Kremen

Most cardiac arrhythmias can be classified as atrial flutter, focal atrial tachycardia, or atrial fibrillation. They have been usually treated using drugs, but catheter ablation has proven more effective. This is an invasive method devised to destroy the heart tissue that disturbs correct heart rhythm. In order to accurately localise the focus of this disturbance, the acquisition and processing of atrial electrograms form the usual mapping technique. They can be single potentials, double potentials, or complex fractionated atrial electrogram (CFAE) potentials, and last ones are the most effective targets for ablation. The electrophysiological substrate is then localised by a suitable signal processing method. Sample Entropy is a statistic scarcely applied to electrograms but can arguably become a powerful tool to analyse these time series, supported by its results in other similar biomedical applications. However, the lack of an analysis of its dependence on the perturbations usually found in electrogram data, such as missing samples or spikes, is even more marked. This paper applied SampEn to the segmentation between non-CFAE and CFAE records and assessed its class segmentation power loss at different levels of these perturbations. The results confirmed that SampEn was able to significantly distinguish between non-CFAE and CFAE records, even under very unfavourable conditions, such as 50% of missing data or 10% of spikes.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document