No abstract

Circumferential antral ablation achieves bidirectional isolation in 80% of PVs. Bidirectional isolation of all PVs is essential to curing patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation.

No abstract

The circadian, circaseptenal and circaannual occurrence of supraventricular paroxysmal tachycardias (SVPT) were examined in patients addressing an Emergency Department. Sixty-one patients, 22 men and 39 women aged 48.3±13.0 y, were eligible and investigated during a solar year. Cosinor method indicated a significant circadian SVPT variation, with an acrophase at about 6 p.m. A similar periodicity was also detected in supraventricular premature beat prevalence (acrophase at 3 h 31 min), concordant with heart rate peaking. Monday was the most frequently affected day, while the circa-annual analysis disclosed a peak in summer and autumn. Our findings provide further evidence that SVPT shows the highest occurrence during daytime, in possible connection with adrenergic influence. Moreover there are clues that cyclic stressors, e.g. the ones connected with working-activity resumption or climate influence, may partly condition SVPT appearance during the week or the year.

Chemotherapy induced cardio-toxicity is a well known side effect of anticancer treatments, moreover the 70% of all tumors involve patients over 65 years-old, frequently with cardiac co- morbidity. We evaluated the feasibility of the application during chemotherapy administration of some of the most recent diagnostic techniques as 12-diagnostic leads telemetry, 7 days EKG monitoring device (R-Test Evolution 3R), blood level dosage of Brain Natriuretic Peptide (BNP) and Ischemia Modified Albumin (IMA). Some sub-clinical changes in the investigated parameters were found in patients undergoing chemotherapy, mostly containing fluorouracil, as shown in the following paper. Far from suggesting a widespread use of these methods during chemotherapy administration, we think that some more tools are needed to prevent cardiac toxicity in high-risk patients and some of what we studied may deserve further valuation in chemotherapy clinical trials