Subclinical Left Ventricular Dysfunction During Chemotherapy

Subclinical left ventricular dysfunction is the most common cardiac complication after chemotherapy administration. Detection and early treatment are major issues for better cardiac outcomes in this cancer population. The most common definition of cardiotoxicity is a 10-percentage point decrease of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) to a value <53%. The myocardial injury induced by chemotherapies is probably a continuum starting with cardiac biomarkers increase before the occurence of a structural myocardial deformation leading to a LVEF decline. An individualised risk profile (depending on age, cardiovascular risk factors, type of chemotherapy, baseline troponin, baseline global longitudinal strain and baseline LVEF) has to be determined before starting chemotherapy to consider cardioprotective treatment. To date, there is no proof of a systematic cardioprotective treatment (angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and/or betablocker) in all cancer patients. However, early cardioprotective treatment in case of subclinical left ventricular dysfunction seems to be promising in the prevention of cardiac events

A Dual Tissue-Doppler Optical-Flow Method for Speckle Tracking Echocardiography at High Frame Rate

International audienc

Coupling myocardium and vortex dynamics in diverging-wave echocardiography

International audienc

Clinical experience of dabigatran and rivaroxaban in electrical cardioversion of atrial fibrillation

Patients scheduled for atrial fibrillation (AF) cardioversion were excluded from clinical trials of novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs). We evaluated efficacy and safety of NOACs in patients undergoing electrical cardioversion for AF. We performed a monocentric study of all patients on NOACs who underwent elective electrical cardioversion for non-valvular AF between January 2012 and December 2014. We analyzed incidence of stroke and bleeding at 30 days. Fifty patients were included, 28 receiving dabigatran, 22 rivaroxaban. Mean age was 65 ± 12 years. Mean CHADS2-VA2SC and HASBLED scores were 3 ± 1.8 and 2.2 ± 1.1 respectively. Transoesophageal echocardiography was performed in 41 (79%) patients, revealing a thrombus in 2 (5%). No clinical evidence of stroke occurred in the 30 days, 1 major gastrointestinal bleeding (2%) in patient on rivaroxaban (led to premature discontinuation) and 3 minor bleedings. NOACs seem to be safe in daily practice of electrical cardioversion in our population

Intracardiac Vortex Dynamics by High-Frame-Rate Doppler Vortography—<italic>In Vivo</italic> Comparison With Vector Flow Mapping and 4-D Flow MRI

International audienc

High-frame-rate speckle-tracking echocardiography

International audienceConventional echocardiography is the leading modality for noninvasive cardiac imaging. It has been recently illustrated that high-frame-rate echocardiography using diverging waves could improve cardiac assessment. The spatial resolution and contrast associated with this method are commonly improved by coherent compounding of steered beams. However, owing to fast tissue velocities in the myocardium, the summation process of successive diverging waves can lead to destructive interferences if motion compensation (MoCo) is not considered. Coherent compounding methods based on MoCo have demonstrated their potential to provide high-contrast B-mode cardiac images. Ultrafast speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) based on common speckle-tracking algorithms could substantially benefit from this original approach. In this paper, we applied STE on high-frame-rate B-mode images obtained with a specific MoCo technique to quantify the 2-D motion and tissue velocities of the left ventricle. The method was first validated in vitro and then evaluated in vivo in the four-chamber view of 10 volunteers. High-contrast high-resolution B-mode images were constructed at 500 frames/s. The sequences were generated with a Verasonics scanner and a 2.5-MHz phased array. The 2-D motion was estimated with standard cross correlation combined with three different subpixel adjustment techniques. The estimated in vitro velocity vectors derived from STE were consistent with the expected values, with normalized errors ranging from 4% to 12% in the radial direction and from 10% to 20% in the cross-range direction. Global longitudinal strain of the left ventricle was also obtained from STE in 10 subjects and compared to the results provided by a clinical scanner: group means were not statistically different (p value = 0.33). The in vitro and in vivo results showed that MoCo enables preservation of the myocardial speckles and in turn allows high-frame-rate STE

Prognostic Value of Iodine-123-Metaiodobenzylguanidine Scintigraphy in Light-Chain Amyloidosis

International audienceNo abstract availabl

Study of self-phase modulation and four-wave mixing in chalcogenide ridge waveguides

International audienc