Active clinical trials for "Heart Diseases"

To confirm the preliminary findings of age, race, and hypertension chronicity effects on opioid and cardiovascular responses to stress and to determine the opioid mechanisms mediating these effects using an opioid receptor blockade strategy.

To help clarify the validity, reliability, and utility of blood pressure (BP) and lipid screening in childhood.

To develop and evaluate a comprehensive lifestyle self-management (CLSM) program (low-fat vegetarian diet, smoking cessation and stress management training) for postmenopausal women with coronary heart disease and Type II (non-insulin dependent) diabetes.

To improve understanding of three important and intertwined social determinants of health: social class, race/ethnicity, and gender.

To investigate the relation between endogenous levels of estrogen in postmenopausal women and the subsequent development of coronary heart disease.

To map the major gene influencing low-density lipoprotein subclass phenotypes, denoted atherogenic lipoprotein (ALP) phenotypes, with a long term goal of cloning the ALP gene and understanding its role in genetic susceptibility to atherosclerosis.

To investigate the variability of lipids and specifically the effects of stress on serum triglyceride levels, total cholesterol, HDL, and LDL in a 2.5 year epidemiological study.

To continue examinations of 670 girls enrolled in the National Growth and Health Study (NGHS) for four more years, adding measurements of total peripheral resistance, cardiac output, DEXA scans for fat-free mass and fat mass, left ventricular mass and geometry, circulating blood volume, whole blood viscosity, and left ventricular contractility.

To determine the impact of the treatment of hypertension on the epidemiological analyses of blood pressure from observational studies.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a new monitor that measures cardiac output (amount of blood pumped by the heart). The system that is being tested in this study, called Endotracheal Cardiac Output Monitor (ECOM), uses electricity (impedance cardiography) to measure cardiac output and is not harmful to the patient. This study will test the accuracy and efficacy of the ECOM system in anesthetized and sedated patients who, in the normal course of clinical care in the OR or ICU, are having cardiac output measured. The investigators propose that unlike the standard system for cardiac output measurement, the ConMed ECOM System should result in a simplified, inexpensive, continuous, less-invasive, and accurate method of measuring cardiac output. Such a technique could allow the rapid diagnosis of instability in the cardiovascular system for critically ill patients.