Video or text? Education through a social media website in hypertension.

Background: Currently, several studies are available on the effective use of the Instagram social media platform to conduct training projects for CVD patients. The aim of this study was to determine the most effective methods (text or video) of informing people about the primary prevention of hypertension using a social media website. Materials and methods: A total of 125 participants were randomly selected and assigned to one of the four training groups depending on the training mode, i.e. text posts (4000 characters) - Group 1, video clips (5 min) - Group 2, text followed by video - Group 3 and video followed by text - Group 4. Before and after training, respondents in all four groups completed the Heart Disease Knowledge Questionnaire (HDKQ). Results: The total number of people who listened to and read the materials of the online school was 2108 people. Before training, the number of correct responses for 29 HDKQ statements was 18.4 ± 5.1, after training it increased to 21.9 ± 3.9 (CI, 21; 22.7) (p < 0.0001). The post-hoc analysis showed that after training the participants in Group 4 had more correct responses than the respondents in Group 3, 2, 1 i.e. Δ = 5.2, Δ = 1.5, Δ = 0.3, respectively. The respondents from Group 3 gave the lowest number of correct responses in other groups. Conclusions: The most effective method of informing people about the primary prevention of hypertension using a social media website corresponded to the following sequence: a video clip followed by a text post.

[Progress and Problems of Practical Cardiology in Russia at the Present Stage].

Mortality of the population due to diseases of the cardiovascular system is the most acute problem in Russia. According to the World Health Organization, the standardized death rate from cardiovascular diseases in the Russian Federation remains one of the highest in Europe. This review presents statistical data on morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the Russian Federation and analyzes the delivery of medical care to patients with these diseases in 2017. Information about activity of primary vascular departments and regional vascular centers is given. The article suggests a set of measures aimed at improvement of the provision of medical care to patients with cardiovascular diseases.

[Tissue Doppler imaging and ultrasonic methods for evaluating myocardial deformation in the diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy].

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic cardiovascular disease caused by mutations in genes that encode components of the sarcomere. Standard echocardiography is not always capable to identify regional systolic dysfunction of the left ventricle (LV), and to detect the disease on its preclinical stage. Genetic testing allows identifying sarcomere gene mutations in less than 50% of patients due to difficulty of screening all genes responsible for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Modern innovative methods of echocardiography - tissue Doppler, strain and strain rate, speckle tracking have been widely used for quantification of regional ventricular motion. Work of recent decades has proven the ability of these techniques to detect regional systolic and diastolic dysfunction of the LV, to diagnose HCM early, to differentiate it from other pathological and physiological hypertrophies. These modes can be used for prediction of cardiovascular complications in patients with HCM. In clinical practice the use of innovative technologies in combination with standard echocardiography allows to obtain more accurate and extensive information on the severity and prognosis of the disease.