Giornale italiano di cardiologia
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Comparative Study
Clinical impact of local implementation of agreed guidelines for the management of patients with acute myocardial infarction.
This study sought to assess the impact of local implementation of clinical practice guidelines on the pattern of care and outcome in patients admitted to the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) with acute myocardial infarction. ⋯ Patients with myocardial infarction managed after local implementation of clinical practice guidelines were more likely to receive evidence-based effective pharmacotherapies, and to have earlier mobilization and earlier discharge from CCU. This study strongly supports the role of local implementation of clinical practice guidelines to optimize management of patients with acute myocardial infarction.
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Comparative Study
[Doppler tissue imaging: a new method in the study of diastolic function in left ventricular hypertrophy].
Many factors influence diastolic function indexes obtained by monitoring left ventricular filling. Recent reports suggest that the study of myocardial wall velocity with Doppler tissue imaging (DTI) can give diastolic function parameters that are less affected by the same factors. An altered diastolic function has been demonstrated with invasive methods in patients with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). The aims of this study were 1) to compare a group of healthy subjects with a group of patients with LVH and presumably affected by diastolic dysfunction, to try to demonstrate if DTI could give new indexes to discriminate between the two groups; 2) to compare the indexes obtained with DTI against the ones given by Doppler study of left ventricular filling in the two populations. ⋯ Diastolic function indexes achieved by DTI can offer additional information that is independent of the data derived from left ventricular filling.