Cardiology Journal 2008, tom 15, nr 2

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common form of arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice, accounting for approximately one third of hospital admissions for cardiac rhythm disturbances [1]. The number of hospital admissions due to AF increased over recent decades, probably as a result of an aging population and a rising prevalence of predisposing risk factors [2]...

Dear Dr Elsayed Z. Soliman,

Usually, the PR or PQ segment (end of P wave up to QRS complex onset), ST segment (from J point or the end of QRS up to the beginning of the T wave) and the TP segment (from the end of the T wave up to the P wave of the following cycle) are at the same level. Figure 1 shows a normal ECG and a line of dots pointing out the level of the three segments: PRs or PQ, ST and TP...

On September 15th of last year, Adolph Blackman, a 70-year-old retired insurance salesman, stood before a group of cardiologists in Zurich and introduced himself. But he needed no introduction. Thirty years before, he and many of these same cardiologists had shared a historical moment, perhaps as important in our lifetime as when, over 150 years before, Dr. John Warren applied Morton’s discovery and painlessly removed a tumour from the neck of a young girl before a group of surgeons in Boston...

Compared with standard test criteria, simple heart rate (HR) adjustment of ST depression during exercise electrocardiography can improve the identification and assessment of underlying coronary artery disease. Since heart rate during exercise drives progressive ST segment depression in the presence of coronary obstruction that limits flow reserve, the ST/HR index controls for the increasing metabolic severity of ischemia that accompanies exercise...

An 81-year-old female patient was admitted to the emergency department because of recurrent episodes of loss of consciousness and seizures.Based on her history of ischaemic stroke and hypertension, she was examined by a neurologist. Urgent cerebral computed tomography was performed and the occurrence of a haemorrhagic event was excluded. During cardiologic consultation, an electrocardiogram in sinus rhythm with bifascicular heart block (right bundle branch and left anterior hemiblock) was recorded, while cardiac auscultation, chest X-ray and biochemical markers revealed no significant findings...

Iatrogenic perimembranous ventricular septal defect is a rare complication after surgical replacement of the aortic valve, and so transcatheter closure of such a defect is not a routine procedure. We report the successful closure of an iatrogenic perimembranous ventricular septal defect which occurred after the replacement of the aortic valve and ascending aorta. ..

The Fontan procedure has become a generic term to define a surgical procedure that orients the systemic venous return directly to the pulmonary arteries, and has been used as a palliative operation for pulmonary atresia, tricuspid atresia, double inlet ventricle and complex single ventricle...

The coronary sinus activation pattern is an important clue for the detection of arrhythmia mechanisms and/or localization of accessory pathways. Any change in this pattern during radiofrequency ablation should be evaluated carefully to recognize the presence of another accessory pathway or innocence of the accessory pathway during arrhythmia...

Despite physicians’ increasing knowledge regarding heart failure (HF), a significant percentage of patients still do not receive adequate treatment. The aim of this multicentre, retrospective descriptive study was to reveal the pharmacotherapy patterns in HF patients hospitalized in cardiology (CARD) and internal medicine (INT) wards in Poland...

The dysfunction of vascular endothelium precedes the development of atherosclerosis in patients with arterial hypertension. Nebivolol is a very specific beta-blocker, which can be characterized by a strong endothelial vasodilatative effect...