We conducted a retrospective study to identify electrocardiogram (ECG) and echocardiogram utilization among patients presenting for a follow-up cardiology evaluation with innocent heart murmur between 2012 and 2014. The 2014 echocardiogram Appropriate Use Criteria was applied. We observed high rates of ordering ECGs and echocardiograms on follow-up visits (79% and 36%); only 1 patient had an appropriate indication for echocardiogram while the rest had rarely appropriate indication. Having had an ECG done did not affect echocardiogram ordering behavior. Older patient age was the only factor associated with a higher likelihood for ordering echocardiograms on follow-up visit (odds ratio = 1.016, P = .021). In this small sample study, we noticed high rates of test utilization and low-probability utilization of echocardiogram in the recurrent evaluation of children with innocent heart murmur. A larger, multicenter prospective study to investigate patterns and drivers of test utilization in children with innocent heart murmur presenting for a follow-up cardiology visit is needed.

No abstract

Free-breathing and ungated cardiac MRI is a challenging problem due to the cardiac motion and respiration motion, which are not tracked. In this work, we propose an unsupervised deep kernel method for reconstructing real-time free-breathing and ungated cardiac MRI from highly undersampled k-t space measurements. We propose implementing the feature map and kernel function in the kernel method using CNNs. The parameters of the CNNs are learned from specific-subject data directly. Comparisons with state-of-the-art kernel methods show improved performance of the proposed deep kernel method.

[Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 175005, 175061, III41002, III45005 i 41022]

Aortopulmonary artery fistula represents a rare anomalous communication between aorta and pulmonary artery. The treatment of these communications is well established and involves either surgical or percutaneous approach. We present a 15-year-old male with history of hypoplastic left ventricle, hypoplastic aorta and ventricular septal defect with Damus-Kaye-Stansel surgery in the past, who developed acute Fontan circuit failure secondary to the development of aortopulmonary fistula of unknown etiology. Fistula was successfully closed percutaneously, using Amplatzer duct occluder.