Active clinical trials for "Heart and Blood Diseases"

A prospective study of 700 patients with coronary artery disease will undergo non invasive evaluation of their carotid arteries by ultrasound and microwave radiometry. The patients will be followed up for 3 years and their outcome regarding the cardiovascular events (death, cardiac events, cerebrovascular events) will be recorded

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is one of the major public health problems in Western country. More than 100,000 Americans die each year from VTE. VTE is also a common complication of critical illness,1-2 and probably related to poor outcome in this patient group. Although there are guidelines about VTE prophylaxis in acutely ill medical patients and patients in medical ICU3, they are overlooked in our daily practice frequently in our country. There are many reasons for our common practice, including inadequate knowledge for the ICU physicians, more patients with bleeding tendency in ICU and low prevalence of VTE in our (eastern) country. However, the true prevalence of VTE in ICU and if thromboprophylaxis still needed in certain high risk patients are not unknown. Besides, if there is a difference in the VTE rate between western and eastern patients, what is the underlying mechanism? The major objective of this application is to answer the first part of the problem, i.e. to delineate the scope of this problem. The specific aims of this application are as follows: prevalence of venous thromboembolism in ICU in Taiwan specific risk in subgroups of ICU patients prevalence and risk factors for silent pulmonary embolism

Postoperative atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass grafting will be monitored up to 1 year after the procedure by implanting a Reveal XT internal loop recorder two weeks before the surgery. Frequency, burden, and possible risk factors will be described. During the operation direct contact epicardial mapping will be performed and tissue samples will be collected to identify an electrophysiological and a structural substrate for development of AF.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of non-invasive markers of the autonomic function and micro- and macrocirculation to predict mortality and cardiovascular end points in end-stage renal disease patients. Furthermore we aim at getting new insight into the insufficiently understood pathophysiology leading to excessively high cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular mortality in dialysis patients.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether non-invasive atherosclerotic measurements (baPWV, IMT, FMD, CACS, ABI) are valuable predictors for cardiovascular events in elderly. At inception, routine physical examination and non-invasive atherosclerotic measurements will conducted on all participants. Then they will be followed prospectively for at least 2 years. All cardiovascular and other health events will be recorded.

Admission BNP was a useful marker for diagnosing and predicting type IV cardio-renal syndrome type IV in patients with chronic kidney disease admitted to the ICU for acute heart failure in a retrospective study. Therefore, we aim to prospectively investigate the utility of serum BNP in evaluating the treatment adequacy and predicting future cardiac events in patients with type IV CRS.

The NET-SCA Registry has been designed to document and evaluate the clinical epidemiology and current management of Acute Coronary Syndromes in the Lazio Region of Italy.

The multicenter study evaluates the diagnostic performance of coronary Computed Tomography Angiogram (CTA) with multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) in comparison with X-ray coronary angiography and the factors affecting the accuracy of coronary CTA in diagnosing stenosis of coronary arteries. Furthermore, the study tends to establish the standard of image quality and associated factors that may ensure accurate diagnosis of coronary stenosis with coronary CTA.

Aims of this study are the evaluation of new echocardiographic methods (3D/4D- and strain-echocardiography) for measurement of the right ventricular (RV) function .

Menorrhagia is the term used to define excessive menstrual blood losses, as often based on a subjective judgment of women. Many arbitrary values, expressed in milliliters of blood, have been proposed to define this symptom: 60 on each cycle has also been confirmed in our preliminary study on 87 healthy women. The quantitative determination of menstrual blood losses is nevertheless rarely performed, only in research settings. Although menorrhagia is a quite frequent symptom in healthy women apparently haemostatically competent in the fertile age (20-30%), its incidence becomes very high in women affected by congenital coagulation factors deficiency and (50-62.9%) inherited platelet defects, e.g. Glanzmann's Thromboasthenia (GT); also in von Willebrand Disease the bleeding symptom "menorrhagia" has an high prevalence (60-75%)(8); for GT an incidence of 90% has been reported. This explains the need for a study focused on the evaluation of menorrhagia in CBDs, addressed to answer to the following, still unsolved questions: Definition of the entity of menstrual blood losses in women affected by CBDs Elaboration of specific treatment schedules for each type of CBD Impact of different specific treatment schedules on kinetic and entity of menstrual losses (how does treatment modify losses?).