Positron emission tomography (PET) using F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has been proven to be a useful tool in the differential diagnosis of liver tumors. Focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) is an uncommon benign liver lesion, which can be difficult to differentiate from other benign and malignant liver pathologies. FDG PET imaging usually shows uptake similar or even decreased compared to that of the normal liver. We describe a hypermetabolic FNH lesion in a patient with a history of breast cancer. Computed tomography scan, ultrasonography (US), and magnetic resonance imaging were negative. The lesion was resected, and histologic findings were consistent with FNH.

Determining the etiology of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) can be challenging due to the similarity in clinical presentation and cardiac morphological features of diverse causes of disease. In particular, distinguishing individuals with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) from the much larger set of individuals with manifest or occult hypertension (HTN) is of major importance for family screening and the prevention of sudden death. We hypothesized that deep learning based joint interpretation of 12 lead electrocardiograms and echocardiogram videos could augment physician interpretation. We chose not to train on proximate data labels such as physician over-reads of ECGs or echocardiograms but instead took advantage of electronic health record derived clinical blood pressure measurements and diagnostic consensus (often including molecular testing) among physicians in an HCM center of excellence. Using over 18,000 combined instances of electrocardiograms and echocardiograms from 2,728 patients, we developed LVH-Fusion. On held-out test data, LVH-Fusion achieved an F1-score of 0.71 in predicting HCM, and 0.96 in predicting HTN. In head-to-head comparison with human readers LVH-Fusion had higher sensitivity and specificity rates than its human counterparts. Finally, we use explainability techniques to investigate local and global features that positively and negatively impact LVH-Fusion prediction estimates providing confirmation from unsupervised analysis the diagnostic power of lateral T wave inversion on the ECG and proximal septal hypertrophy on the echocardiogram for HCM. In conclusion, these results show that deep learning can provide effective physician augmentation in the face of a common diagnostic dilemma with far reaching implications for the prevention of sudden cardiac death.

It is reasonable to recommend isometric muscle training with the aim of lowering systolic blood pressure, considering the impact of the results of the articles analyzed and the applicability of this type of training.

This paper summarizes the opinions of 20 representatives of well-known European centers for adult and pediatric thoracic and cardiovascular surgery regarding the optimal structure and organization of such units. These opinions were collected by means of a questionnaire, and the answers were discussed by the members of the group. Statistical analysis showed a high degree of concordance on the following subjects: The population to be covered by a given center, the relationship between cardiac surgery and cardiology, the minimal number of operations to be performed, the surgical, anaesthesiological and nursing staff, the equipment level required, the surgical training and research, and the cooperation with other centers, Partial concordance of opinions was reached in other aspects, while on some topics widely divergent views were stated, depending, in part, upon regional differences. This material is discussed in detail and we hope it will serve as a guide for the future development in this field both within and outside of Europe.