[Importance of transesophageal echocardiography and computed tomography in the differential diagnosis of a case of papillary fibroelastoma revealed by a neurologic accident]. / Intérêt de l'échocardiographie transoesophagienne et du scanner multicoupes dans la démarche diagnostique d'un cas de fibroélastome papillaire révélé par un accident neurologique.

In the light of a new case revealed by a stroke, the authors confirm the importance of transesophagal echocardiography (TEE), and show that multislide computered tomography can be used as a new efficient tool for the diagnosis of cardiac papillary fibroelastoma (CPF). These benign tumours of endocardium are rare and case reports have been published sporadically. Stroke is an usual clinical complication and the most frequent symptom associated with CPF. Transesophageal echocardiography is the reference for diagnosis of CPF when transthoracic echocardiography is normal. When TEE is contraindicated or technically impossible, multislide computered tomography appears as an interesting alternate solution for diagnosis because of its fast acquisition and high spatial resolution. Symptomatology may be connected to either tumoral embolisation or cruoric emboli. Surgery is required for any symptomatic tumour.

[Leiomyosarcoma of the right ventricle]. / Léiomyosarcome cardiaque du ventricule droit.

A 58-year-old woman has dyspnea and palpitations which reveal a leiomyosarcoma of the right ventricle. The medical imaging shows a lobulated sessile tumor attached to the ventricular septum and the tricuspid valve extending into the pulmonary artery trunk. The resection is performed with a tricuspid valvoplasty. In spite of chemotherapy (epirubicin-cyclophosphamide), relapse is observed with pulmonary metastases 17 months after the surgery. The death becomes on 18 months in congestive heart failure. From this case, the authors make a review of the literature about this exceptional tumour, and talk over the low possibilities of treatment, despite the capacities of the new ways of diagnosis.

[Importance of the blood pressure exercise graph in the diabetic]. / Intérêt du profil tensionnel d'effort chez le diabétique.

The evaluation of the real blood pressure in the diabetic population has a major interest. Arterial blood pressure measure during standardised exercise test could be a supplementary aid in this field of research. This retrospective work is based on 134 diabetic patients compared with age, sex and body mass index matched controls. All of them were tested with a standardised protocol of bicycle ergometer. In the diabetic group, 62 patients present a microalbuminuria over 30 mg/day. The heart rate and arterial pressure do not differ between diabetics and controls before, during, and after the exercise. The registered parameters at the top of the effort are exactly the same for the pulse the systolic and the diastolic blood pressure. Systolic blood pressure gradient during effort is not different between the two groups. The presence of microalbuminuria into the diabetic group do not provoke any modification of cardiac frequency or pressure during the effort. Nevertheless a decrease in systolic blood pressure gradient is noted into the microalbuminuria group despite their older age is in favour of an increase in this parameter. Exercise test has a main place to track down coronary disease and the field of interest is the same that non diabetic patients to find white coat hypertension, to value arterial pressure reactivity during effort of hypertensive athletes or border line hypertensives. The signification and interest of the modification of systolic blood pressure gradient should to be evaluated by other works.

[Comparison of magnetic resonance angiography with injection of gadolinium and conventional arteriography of the ilio-femoral arteries]. / Comparaison de l'angiographie par résonance magnétique avec injection de gadolinium et de l'artériographie conventionnelle des axes ilio-fémoraux.

Twenty-three patients underwent conventional arteriography and 3D contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography explorations. The study was limited to the iliofemoral arteries (13 segments for each patient). Each segment was classified as having 0-49%, 50-99% or 100% stenosis. Overall results were excellent with K = 0.822, sensitivity 92% and specificity 93%. Segment by segment analysis corroborated the overall results except for the internal iliac arteries and the deep femoral arteries, demonstrating the limitations of this technique in this series.

[Analysis of frequency-dependence of ventricular repolarisation by the Holter method in young adults. Influence of the autonomic nervous system on the rate-dependence of QT]. / Analyse de la fréquence-dépendance de la repolarisation ventriculaire par méthode Holter chez l'adulte jeune. Influence du système nerveux autonome sur la fréquence-dépendance de QT.

UNLABELLED: Adaptation of ventricular repolarization duration to heart rate provides additional information to the static duration of QT interval. METHODS: QT/RR relation and his slope were determined using 24-hour ECG recordings from 17 young male normal volunteers (mean age: 22 +/- 3 years). In order to determine the influence of the autonomic nervous system on the rate-dependence of QT, the authors compared the slopes obtained from recordings during the day and the night. Then, the respective rate-dependences of the entire QT interval (QTe) and its initial subdivision (QTa) and their correlations with parameters of heart rate variability were studied. RESULTS: the QTa/RR and QTe/RR relations were constantly linear, with very significant regression coefficients. The daytime QTa/RR and QTe/RR slopes were significantly steeper than the nighttime ones (0.138 +/- 0.035 vs 0.108 +/- 0.040, p < 0.05 for QTe/RR, 0.160 +/- 0.069 vs 0. 108 +/- 0.055, p < 0.01 for QTa/RR). The early part of QT showed a stronger rate-dependence than the global QT, but only at daytime (0.160 +/- 0.069 vs 0.138 +/- 0.035, p < 0.05). No correlation was found between rate dependences and heart rate variability parameters. CONCLUSION: the authors demonstrate, from ambulatory ECG recordings, the influence of the autonomic nervous system on the rate-dependence of ventricular repolarization in normal young adults, and a difference in rate-dependence between the entire QT interval and its initial part QTa, due to differences in autonomic nervous system tone. This heterogeneity should be taken to account in the study of pathological changes or drugs effects on ventricular repolarization.

Relationship between diabetic autonomic dysfunction and heart rate variability assessed by recurrence plot.

Beat-to-beat heart rate (HR) and blood pressure were measured by the Finapres system in 44 healthy and 64 diabetic subjects in the at-rest condition. Autonomic control in diabetic subjects was assessed by the Ewing test. HR variability was explored by both linear and nonlinear methods. Linear methods used HR standard deviation and power spectrum. The percentage of the spectrum in the low frequencies was used to assess the sympathetic tone of the autonomic control. The nonlinear method used the "recurrence plot." This method explored long parallel subsequences in the HR time series. These sequences characterize the dependence of the HR dynamics on initial values. The HR standard deviation was reduced in the diabetic subjects compared with the healthy subjects (2.80 +/- 1.17 vs. 3.64 +/- 1.45 beats/min; P < 0.001). In the diabetic subjects, the HR standard deviation and the percentage of the spectrum in the low frequencies showed no correlations with the Ewing score (P > 0.10). In contrast, the longest length index was very strongly correlated to the Ewing score (r = -0.60; P < 0.0001). The results suggest that nonlinear methods might be powerful to explore the autonomic dysfunction in diabetic subjects.

[Evaluation of the degree of diabetic dysautonomy with the analysis of heart rate measured at rest with the FINAPRES system]. / Evaluation du degré de dysautonomie diabétique par l'analyse de la fréquence cardiaque mesurée au repos par le système FINAPRES.

In this work, we developped the ERK (Eckmann, Ruelle and Khamporst) method of recurrent plots to analyse Heart Rate Variability (HRV), measured by the FINAPRES system in diabetic subjects. Our aim was to search some indices that might characterize the degree of dysautonomy detected in diabetic subjects, using the Ewing tests. The idea was to analyze the recurrences of the HR to previously observed values. When a value of HR, xi measured at the j-th beat come back to an already observed value, we compare the distances between the following measures (xi + 1 to xj + 1), (xj + 2 to xj + 2)... If the distances are under a given criteria during k beats, xi is deterministic of order k. Let n1 be the number of recurrent points and nk the number of k-order deterministic points, with k = 2, 3, 4... We defined the index of determinism nk + 1/nk and the Shannon entropy of the Nk = nk-nk + 1. These indices will be correlated to the total score of the 5 Ewing tests, which represent the standard measure to evaluate the diabetic dysautonomy. Blood pressure (BP) and HR were measured during about 30 minutes using the FINAPRES system in 44 healthy subjects and 60 non-hypertensive diabetic subjects. In the diabetic subjects, the age, the body weight and systolic and diastolic BP were 56 +/- 13 years (mean +/- standard-deviation), 79 +/- 14 kg, 80 +/- 10 mmHg and 137 +/- 20 mmHg. HR was weakly correlated to age (r = 0.29; p = 0.02) and the Ewing score (r = 0.31; p = 0.01). Its standard-deviation is also weakly correlated to age (r = 0.32; p = 0.01) and to the Ewing score (r = 0.34; p = 0.01). Using the ERK method, we obtained indices which are much more correlated to the Ewing score. In particular, the ratio n2/n1 and Shannon entropy were correlated to the Ewing score with r = 0.51 and r = 0.53, respectively (p < 0.0001 in both cases). These indices are also correlated to age (r = 0.40; p = 0.003) in both cases. The ERK method give some indices which are easy to obtain (measurement of HR during a rest period) and easy to interpret. These indices are strongly linked to the dysautonomy score which required a good cooperation of the patient and a great vigilance during its execution. This method could be applied to BP to explore BP regulation in hypertensive subjects.

[Chronic compartment syndrome]. / Le syndrome chronique des loges.

Among causes of leg pains, a usual disability in athletes, chronic exertional compartment syndrome is far from being uncommon. To the opposite, descriptions concerning the others compartments such as the forearm or thigh are still scarce and poorly documented. A variety of techniques have been described for the measurement of intramuscular pressure. Intramuscular pressure measurement is a valuable and essential tool for diagnosing a compartment syndrome, but it is somewhat controversial when the deep posterior compartment is concerned. Conservative treatment is unsuccessful, whereas surgical decompression yield favorable results; two procedures are performed subcutaneous fasciotomy or open fasciotomy.

[Effect of arterial pressure level evaluated using ambulatory measurement on the two year course of microalbuminuria of type 1 diabetic subjects]. / Influence du niveau de pression artérielle évalué par mesure ambulatoire sur l'évolution a deux ans de la microalbuminurie de sujets diabétiques de type 1.

The aim of the present study is the evaluation two years apart of the effect of initial blood pressure values on ambulatory blood pressure determinations on the rise of microalbuminuria in 77 Type 1 diabetic patients. At the beginning of the study, subjects with incipient nephropathy have a whole day systolic and diastolic blood pressure greater than those whose microalbuminuria is below than 30 mg/24 h (127.7 +/- 15.1 mmHg versus 115 +/- 14.3 mmHg, p < 0.001; 76.6 +/- 8.1 mmHg versus 72.5 +/- 7.3 mmHg, p < 0.05). Among patients whose initial microalbuminuria was lower than 30 mg/24 h, incipient nephropathy will not be dependent on initial blood pressure values but conditioned by patients' age and duration diabetes of mellitus. On the other hand, blood pressure increases the microalbuminuria of the patients who had incipient nephropathy at the beginning of the study. In patients with diabetes mellitus, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring appreciates the impact of the pressure rise on the kidney, retina and heart.

[Cardiac autonomic neuropathy. Current realities and future outlook]. / La neuropathie végétative cardiaque d'origine diabétique. Réalités actuelles et perspectives d'avenir.

Cardiac autonomic neuropathy frequently affects Type 1 and Type 2 diabetic patients. This disease is distinguished by visible clinical consequences which can be tragic. It can also worsen a number of degenerative complications. Therefore, cardiac autonomic neuropathy seems to play a deciding role in silent ischaemia and in dysregulations of blood pressure. Clinical explorations continue to be based on the tests validated by Ewing, but the development of simple and reliable techniques seems to be an objective the interest of which cannot escape any clinician.

Ambulatory blood pressure in diabetic subjects.

Ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) was measured every 15 min for 24 h in 82 diabetic subjects aged 35 to 79 years and in 66 healthy controls having the same age and office blood pressure. The autonomic control in diabetic subjects was evaluated by the total score of five cardiovascular function tests (a high score means an autonomic neuropathy). The diurnal cycle of BP was assessed by the difference of BP between daytime and nighttime (delta BP = BP in the day - BP in the night). The variability of BP was evaluated by the standard deviations of the readings. Compared with control subjects, diabetic subjects had the same 24-h mean level of BP, a smaller delta BP, and an increased variability during the daytime; however, the differences were in the limit of statistical significance. Clearcut results were obtained in diabetic subjects with autonomic neuropathy. In the latter, the score of autonomic neuropathy was (1) negatively correlated to delta SBP (systolic) and delta DBP (diastolic) (r = 0.44, P = .0004 and r = 0.46, P = .0004, respectively) and (2) positively correlated to the variability of SBP and DBP during the daytime (r = 0.46, P .0004 and r = 0.29, P = .03, respectively). In diabetic subjects, mean level and variability of ABP were positively correlated to urinary microalbumin. The relationships were the most significant when one relates microalbuminuria to the level of SBP in the night (r = 0.42, P < .0003) and to the variability of SBP in the day (r = 0.32, P = .008).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Use of runs test to assess cardiovascular autonomic function in diabetic subjects.

OBJECTIVE: We suggest a simple, noninvasive method to assess the autonomic function in diabetic subjects. The method requires only a monitoring of heart rate (HR) with subjects in the sitting position. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Sixty diabetic subjects, 44 men and 16 women, between 20-80 years of age, were recruited, chronologically, for this study. Subjects treated for high blood pressure were not included. Their autonomic function was assessed by the total score of five classical cardiovascular function tests. In the same subjects and in 44 healthy subjects, blood pressure and HR were determined from beat to beat by the Finapres system with subjects in the sitting position. We examined the randomness of the HR changes by calculating the zeta statistic of the runs test on 1,000 successive HR readings (the zeta value is low if the HR changes are random). When the HR changes are random, we consider that the autonomic control of HR is impaired. RESULTS: The zeta values of HR changes were significantly lower in diabetic subjects compared with normal subjects (2.98 +/- 0.97 vs. 3.54 +/- 0.97, P < 0.004). In diabetic subjects, the zeta value was closely correlated to the total score of disautonomy (r = -0.66, P < 0.0001, after correction for age effect) and to the office systolic blood pressure (r = -0.43, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The zeta value of HR changes might be a marker of the autonomic function in diabetic subjects.

[Comparative evaluation of diabetic cardiac autonomic neuropathy by spectrum analysis and Ewing's tests]. / Evaluation comparative de la neuropathie végétative cardiaque diabétique par analyse spectrale et tests d'Ewing.

METHODS: 62 diabetic patients of both sex (age: 46 +/- 16 yr, BMI: 26.1 +/- 4 kg/m2, casual blood pressure: 134 +/- 17/81 +/- 11 mmHg, mean age of diabetes: 11 +/- 9 yr) without cardiovascular medications were recruited. Autonomic involvement was based on the results from a battery of five cardiovascular tests as suggested by Ewing. The result of each test and a scoring system was considered. All patients underwent power spectral analysis (PSA) of digital blood pressure (BP) and RR intervals recorded in the recumbent position and after tilting with a Finapres monitor. The percentage of total power (0.025-0.4 Hz) computed in the low-frequency band (0.070-0.139 Hz) computed in the low-frequency band (0.070-0.139 Hz) was chosen as a sympathetic index (sigma Ind). Results of tests were correlated with sigma Ind. RESULTS: 24 patients (39%) have an autonomic involvement. The most affected tests are: the Valsalva maneuver (VAL): 16% RR response from lying to standing (LS): 25%, sustained handgrip (SHG): 30%, postural hypotension (PH); 57%, deep breathing (DB): 87%. Correlations coefficients of cardiovascular tests and sigma Ind are: VAL/sigma Ind (SBP tilt): r = 0.277, p = 0.029; Val/sigma Ind (DBP tilt): r = 0.318, p = 0.012; VAL/sigma Ind (RR tilt): ns. PH/Ind sigma (SBP tilt): r = 0.391, p = 0.0017; PH/sigma Ind (DBP tilt): r = -0.296, p = 0.019; PH/sigma Ind (RR tilt): r = -0.308, p = 0.015, DB/sigma Ind (SBP tilt): r = 0.417, p = 0.0007; DB/sigma Ind (DBP tilt): r = 0.361, p = 0.0039; DB/sigma Ind (RR tilt): ns. Results of LS and SHG show no correlation with Ind sigma. Correlations between global autonomic score (GAS) and sigma Ind during tilting have the following values: GAS/sigma Ind (SBP tilt): r = -0486, p = 0.0001; GAS/sigma Ind (DBP tilt): r = -0.385, p = 0.002; GAS/sigma Ind (RR tilt): r = -0.411, p = 0.0009. CONCLUSIONS: The so-called sympathetic index computed from PSA are well correlated with autonomic tests. They allow an early detection of sympathetic involvement in diabetics patients. These results are to consider while managing these subjects.