BackgroundHypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular morbidities, including coronary artery disease (CAD).ObjectivesWith interest on the important role of hypertension in the progression of CAD, this study was designed to estimate the effect of garlic powder tablets on the blood pressure (BP) in patients with severe CAD.MethodsA randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial was conducted on 56 CAD patients, aged 25 - 75 years old. The patients were randomly divided into two groups: Galois groups (n = 27), receiving garlic powder tablet (400 mg garlic) twice daily and the placebo groups (n = 29), receiving placebo for 3 months. The BP was assessed at baseline and at the end of the study.ResultsDuring the 3 months study, in the placebo group, systolic BP (SBP) increased with 6.3 mmHg and diastolic BP (DBP) increased with 4.6 mmHg, changes which were significant. After the 3 months, the effect of garlic on SBP, after adjusting for baseline value, was significant, and this effect was more significant in hypertensive patients. Plasma lipids and lipoproteins did not change significantly in either the garlic or placebo groups, during the study. Tolerability, compliance and acceptability were high in all patients.ConclusionsThese results demonstrate that treatment with garlic-based drugs can be an effective treatment for controlling BP in CAD patients and has no interaction with other drugs that CAD patients take. Therefore, it may be considered as a safe adjunct treatment for this group of patients.

Background: Left ventricle segmentation plays an essential role in computation of cardiac functional parameters such as ventricular end diastolic and end systolic volumes, ejection fraction, myocardial mass, and wall thickness and also wall motion analysis. Manual segmentation is also time consuming and suffers from inter and intra observer variability. Several approaches have been proposed that segment the left ventricle (LV) by automatic and semi-automatic methods, but the problem is still open due to the huge shape variety of the left ventricle and motion artifact.

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