According to Schopenhauer problems are usually passing through three stages: - in the first stage they are ignored or just smiled at, - in the second stage they are fought, and in the third stage they are considered to be self-evident, just taken for granted. Whereas digital subtraction angiography (DSA) has obviously reached stage three of that scale, i.e. routine use in radiology, digital angiocardiography, in particular imaging the heart and coronary circulation, is still on its way to the final goal: the filmless heart catheterization laboratory for all invasive and interventional...

Therapy in cardiology has advanced enormously in recent years. This has resulted in the organization of many meetings and the publication of numerous books dedicated to examining the latest aspects of, for instance, pharmacolog ic, electrical and surgical treatment. However, only a few of these meetings and publications have attempted to present an overall review of all advances that have taken place in the field of therapy. In the last years the Spanish Society of Cardiology has shown a great interest in the continuous medical education in cardiology. The Society has organized various...

To our knowledge, this is the first book dealing exclusively with myocardial contrast two-dimensional echocardiography (MC-2DE), a new and exciting diagnostic methodology for assessment of myocardial perfusion, which has seen rapid development and has now entered the clinical stage. The experi- mental research and human applications have been described in technical papers published in a variety of journals, but our objective is to provide the reader with a comprehensive and concentrated overview of the field and of the current state of the art. To facilitate appreciation of the significant...

F.J.Th. WACKERS Metabolic imaging: The future of cardiovascular nuclear imaging? Since cardiovascular nuclear imaging emerged as a new subspecialty in the mid-1970s, the field has gone through an explosive growth. Radionuclide techniques became readily recognized as important new diagnostic aids in the armamentarium of the clinical cardiologist. Initially, cardiovascular nuclear imaging focused on static myocardial imaging using either thallium-201 or technetium-99m-pyrophosphate for diagnosing acute myocardial infarction. Shortly thereafter, multigated equilibrium radionuclide...

Cardiac ultrasound has rapidly developed into one of the most important clinical methods for diagnosis and follow-up of patients with heart disease and has changed the practice of cardiology permanently. In addition to improving image quality, most of the progress relies on digital image acquisition, storage, and quantitative analysis equipment. Automatic endocardial detection and three- dimensional reconstruction are now being developed. The progress with contrast echocardiography for myocardial perfusion imaging and results with tissue characterization is slow, but ever increasing,...

This volume constitutes the proceedings of a satellite symposium of the XXXth congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences. The symposium has been held In Banff, Alberta Canada July 9-11 1986. The program was organized to provide a selective overview of current developments in cardiac biophysics, biochemistry, and physiology. In order to highlight areas of develop- ing ideas and to stimulate the participants' inquisitiveness into the nature and complexity of the integrated cardiovascular system, lectures and discussions were presented that emphasized evolving and sometimes...

The basic mechanism underlying directional differences in excitability, con- duction velocity, andsafetyfactor thatleadtocircusmovementreentry incardiac muscle is generally attributed to a spatial difference in the refractory period as originally described by Mines [1] or to a depressed segment as described by Schmitt and Erlanger [2]. A departure from this depolarization in cardiac muscle involve quantities, such as Vmax' that are not directly descriptive of the underlying mechanisms of propagation.

The rhythm of the heart, its normal functioning and pathologic disturbances, has been a favored subject of investigation by clinical and basic scientists in recent decades. This heightened interest and attention was stimulated by the somber and surprising revelations from epidemiologists and pathologists of the enormity of the number of sudden arrhythmic deaths in the Western world, and the concurrent advancement of technology for recording and control of electrical activity of the heart. Technological advancements have included the recording of intracellular potentials from cardiac cells,...

Basic Concepts in Doppler Echocardiography The objective of this textbook is to offer a detailed yet concise overview of the various applications of Doppler echocardiography. The fundamental principles of pulsed mode, continuous mode, and color flow mapping are fully explained as well as the clinical applications of each modality in the evaluation of various cardiac pathologies. A copious amount of figures and illustrations is included so that the reader is able to follow the discussions in the text by referring to the appropriate case studies. The emphasis of this book is focused upon the...

Few diagnostic methods in Cardiology have heralded such revolutionary developments as the introduction of coronary arteriography. When, in the early 1960's, Dr. F. Mason Sones demonstrated that visualization of the coronary anatomy in living humans was not only feasible but sufficiently safe and reliable to be used as a clinical tool in the evaluation of patients with known or suspected ischemic heart disease, the thus far somewhat neglected area of coronary circulation became the focus of interest. Naturally, for a considerable period of time a great deal of emphasis was placed upon coronary...