ABSTRACT
The present study investigated the right ventricular filling pattern with Dopplerechocardiography in childhood and adolescent patients (n = 31) with cystic fibrosis and in normal subjects. The results show that, as the pulmonary pressure increases (RPEP/AT > or = 1.0), the peak flow velocity during atrial contraction and the triangle under the atrial velocity are significantly increased while the acceleration half-time is significantly decreased. These are sensitive parameters for right ventricular diastolic dysfunction.
Subject(s)
Cystic Fibrosis/diagnostic imaging , Diastole/physiology , Echocardiography, Doppler , Ventricular Function, Right/physiology , Adolescent , Adult , Blood Flow Velocity/physiology , Child , Child, Preschool , Cystic Fibrosis/physiopathology , Female , Humans , Male , Ventricular Dysfunction, Right/diagnostic imaging , Ventricular Dysfunction, Right/physiopathologyABSTRACT
Idioventricular or accelerated ventricular rhythm has been reported frequently in adults--usually in association with acute myocardial infarction, sometimes in other heart diseases, but also in healthy individuals. Until today the origin of this rhythm disturbance is unknown, its nature benign and doesn't influence the prognosis adversely. The ectopic idioventricular rhythm was present intermittently, competed with the similar frequency of sinus rhythm and subdued by increasing the basic sinus rate was subdued. Such patients needs no therapy! The onset of idioventricular rhythm was observed in infancy and childhood too, but only a few reports exists. One case of idioventricular rhythm occurring in a 9-year-old girl is presented. In our opinion, cardiologic basic diagnostic methods (including echocardiography), Holter monitoring and possibly ergometry are sufficient to characterize this benign rhythm anomaly and to avoid unnecessary and perhaps dangerous treatment with antiarrhythmic drugs.
Subject(s)
Tachycardia, Ectopic Junctional/congenital , Atrioventricular Node/physiopathology , Bundle of His/physiopathology , Cardiac Complexes, Premature/physiopathology , Child , Diagnosis, Differential , Electrocardiography, Ambulatory , Exercise Test , Female , Heart Rate/physiology , Humans , Sinoatrial Node/physiopathology , Tachycardia, Ectopic Junctional/physiopathologyABSTRACT
Kosslyn (1980, 1983) theorized that performance measures on imagery tasks may vary as a function of the existence of independent processes in imaging ability. The present study determined whether improvement can be made in performance on such tasks with practice. It also considered whether performance on such tasks improves with practice and whether this improvement generalizes. Experiment 1 determined whether improvement in a mental rotation task generalizes to improvement in a geometric analogies task, with both tasks weighted in Kosslyn's find process, but not in a line drawing memory task weighted in Kosslyn's regenerate process. In Experiment 2, we examined generalization in improvement from a geometric analogies task to a mental rotation task. In Experiment 3, we tested whether improvement in an animal imagery task (Kosslyn, 1975) generalizes to improvement in a line drawing memory task, with both tasks weighted in Kosslyn's regenerate process, but not to improvement in a mental rotation task. Performance improved with practice on all tasks. Furthermore, performance improved from one task to another only if both tasks loaded on the same process.
Subject(s)
Attention , Generalization, Psychological , Imagination , Mental Recall , Orientation , Pattern Recognition, Visual , Adult , Humans , Problem Solving , Psychomotor Performance , Retention, PsychologyABSTRACT
The diagnosis "innocent murmur" is made when there is no evidence for a heart disease either by history nor by examination, auscultation, electrocardiogram or echocardiography. The purpose of the present study was to determine the usefulness of echocardiography for diagnosing of an innocent heart murmur and further to compare the findings of ultrasound with those of the clinical examination. Children were accepted for the study after clinical examination and evaluation of the electrocardiogram (but before echocardiography) only when two independent pediatricians did not realize any symptoms of a heart disease. A total number of 200 children were examined; 121 were male and 79 female. 194 children (97%) had an innocent murmur, six children (3%) a heart disease [atrial septum defect (3), bicuspid aortic valve (1), aortic stenosis (1) or pulmonary stenosis]. The sensitivity and positive predictive value of clinical examination and auscultation ranged from 92% to 99%, the specificity from 50% to 60%. In six cases the initial diagnosis had to be changed after echocardiography. Three times an innocent murmur was diagnosed as a heart disease and another three times a pathological murmur was regarded as innocent. Left ventricular bands were seen in 53 (26,5%) children and they significantly correlated with the musical heart murmur (77%). If there was no false tendon, the murmur was mostly an uncharacteristic one (74% (less than 0,001). The echocardiographic findings were not different of those children without a murmur or heart disease. The average peak velocity in the ascending aorta was 143,1 +/- 23,6 cm/s (87-215 cm/s), the shortening fraction 36,2 +/- 6,3%. We could not find a correlation between velocity, shortening fraction and aortic diameter.
