Background: Coronary artery disease remains the main cause of death despite several preventive programs. Epicardial adipose tissue is a visceral fat depot of the heart located along the large coronary arteries and on the surface of ventricles and apex. Intima media thickness is commonly recognized as the initial stage in the development of atherosclerosis. The development of ultrasound machines, advances in echocardiographic devices and high resolution transducers facilitate comprehensive analysis of epicardial fat thickness (EFT) and carotid –intima media thickness (C-IMT).
Aim: To investigate the relationship of echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness (EFT) and carotid –intima media thickness (C-IMT) with the severity of coronary artery disease.
Methods: A cross sectional multicenter diagnostic accuracy study carried out at Ibn Al-Nafis Cardiovascular Hospital, Ibn Al- Bitar Cardiology Center and Ghazi Al-Hariri Hospital –Iraqi Center for Cardiology during the period between October 2016 and May 2017 assessing. History regarding demographic data and risk factors was taken. Two dimensional transthoracic echocardiographic measurements were done. EFT was measured from parasternal long axis view perpendicular to the right ventricular free wall. C-IMT was measured according to that recommended by the American society of echocardiography (ASE).
Results: The current study demonstrated that the EFT has a direct and significant correlation with the number of involved vessels (P value ˂ 0.001, r= 0.770). The validity of EFT to discriminate between multiple vessels disease and no vessel involvement is excellent (AUC= 0.984, cut point > 8mm, sensitivity=92.9%, specificity= 93.3%). There is inverse and significant correlation between ejection fraction (EF) and three vessels disease (P value ˂ 0.001, r= -0.507). Also there is a direct and significant correlation between C-IMT and severity of CAD. ROC analysis for validity of C-IMT to discriminate between multiple vessels disease and no vessel involvement is excellent (AUC= 0.961, cut point > 1.04mm, sensitivity=92.9%. specificity=86.7%). C-IMT is fair to discriminate between single vessel disease and no vessel involvement (AUC=0.738, cut point ˃ 0.84mm, sensitivity 100%), so if correlated with age, C-IMT above 0.84 can be used as a cut off point for the prediction of CAD. Finally, EFT and C-IMT are more likely to reflect severity of CAD than their ratio.
Conclusions: C-IMT and EFT are simple and reproducible parameters that can be used as a screening tool for the presence and severity of CAD especially before symptoms appearance in high risk patients
Background: In December 2019, an episode of COVID-19 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV2) was reported in Wuhan, China and has spread around the world, increasing the number of contagions. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) are common herpesviruses that can cause persistent latent infections and affect the developing immune system.The study was conducted to explore the prevalence and reactivation of CMV and EBV antibodies in COVID-19 patients group in comparison to healthy group and to investigate the association between the presence of these viruses with each of severity of disease and oral hygiene. Materials and Methods: Eighty Five subjects were participated in this case control study (5
... Show MoreObjective: to assess the risk factors of coronary artery disease patients.
Methodology: A non-probability (purposive) sample of (100) patients. The study population consisted of
a sample of adults from both genders whose ages were 30 years and more, and was newly diagnosed as
having CAD by coronary angiography in the cardiac catheterization unit of An Nasiriyah heart center.
Results: The result of the study showed that the most common modifiable risk factors were low HDL-C
levels (58%), smoking (53%), hypertension (46%), diabetes mellitus (34%), obesity (30%), high
triglycerides (19%), hypercholesterolemia (17%), and high LDLC (14%). All these factors were positively
and significantly associated with the development
Thin films were prepared from melting coumrin C 2 dye in solvent DMF with PMMA with the same solvent and concentrations(1*10-2 5*10-3, 1*10-3 )M ,Films were either left on Flat surface for24hours or dried in avacuum oven for five hours at a temperature of 80c.The relative intensity of both the absorption and fluorescece spectrum are found to be increased with the increase of thickness of these films and concentration .Also the thickness of these films was measured by Mickelsons interfearing method.Also quantum efficiency of these films were measured too
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the thickness of the compressed breast in mediolateral oblique (MLO) and craniocaudal (cc) mammograms to relate these thickness and breast patterns to mean glandular dose (MAD) in Iraqi women and to evalualat radiology's recommendation for Iraqi women. The study of population consists of 20 paired MLO and CC mammograms obtained on one mammograms unit .The digital read out of compressed breast thickness MGD was calculated by multiplying entrance skin exposure by the exposureto-absorbed dose conversion factor for the range of breast thickness which was 7.1 ----7.4cm in cc mammograms with a mean breast thickness of 7.2 cm and 7.3 ------7.5 cm in MLO mammograms with a mean br
... Show MoreObjectives: To study the prevalence of rs1799964 (-1031 T/C) and rs361525 (- 238 G/A) SNPs and their effect on the disease activity, severity, and cytokines production in newly diagnosed Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients. Patients and Methods: sixty-three patients were diagnosed by a specialist physician while attending the rheumatology unit and twenty control participated. The inflammatory markers were measured and PCR amplification and sequencing were performed to demonstrate TNF-α SNPs. Results: Regarding (-1031 C/T) SNP, the TT genotype and allele C were significantly present in the controls, and the CT genotype was distributed significantly in the patients. The TT genotype was mostly distributed in the mild-moder
... Show MoreBackground: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common disease and it accounts for over 10% of all hospital medical admission. Cigarette smoking is the most important risk factor. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PHT) is a common complication of COPD and the increase in pulmonary artery pressure is often mild to moderate. The presence of pulmonary arterial pressure and its severity is readily and reliably determined by transthoracic echocardiography in majority of COPD patients.
Patients and Methods: This study included 55 patients with mean age 65.6 ±8.2 years .The mean duration of symptoms was 18 ±10 months. 32 patients (58%) were current smoker, 18 patients (33%) were exsmoker and 5 pat
Zinc sulfide(ZnS) thin films of different thickness were deposited on corning glass with the substrate kept at room temperature and high vacuum using thermal evaporation technique.the film properties investigated include their absorbance/transmittance/reflectance spectra,band gap,refractive index,extinction coefficient,complex dielectric constant and thickness.The films were found to exhibt high transmittance(59-98%) ,low absorbance and low reflectance in the visible/near infrared region up to 900 nm..However, the absorbance of the films were found to be high in the ultra violet region with peak around 360 nm.The thickness(using optical interference fringes method) of various films thichness(100,200,300,and 400) nm.The band gap meas
... Show MoreFlexible pavement design and analysis were carried out in the past with semi-experimental methods, using elastic characteristics of pavement layers. Due to the complex interferences between various layers and their time consumption, the traditional pavement analysis, and design methods were replaced with fast and powerful methods including the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the Discrete Element Method (DEM). FEM requires less computational power and is more appropriate for continuous environments. In this study, flexible pavement consisting of 5 layers (surface, binder, base, subbase, and subgrade) had been analyzed using FEM. The ABAQUS (6.14-2) software had been utilized to investigate the influence of the base layer depth on ver
... Show MoreAtherosclerosis is the most common causes of vascular diseases and it is associated with a restriction in the lumen of blood vessels. So; the study of blood flow in arteries is very important to understand the relation between hemodynamic characteristics of blood flow and the occurrence of atherosclerosis.
looking for the physical factors and correlations that explain the phenomena of existence the atherosclerosis disease in the proximal site of LAD artery in some people rather than others is achieved in this study by analysis data from coronary angiography as well as estimating the blood velocity from coronary angiography scans without having a required data on velocity by using some mathematical equations and physical laws. Fif
... Show MoreBackground: Vascular complications have been recognized as an important factor in morbidity after diagnostic and percutaneous coronary interventions.
Objectives: This study sought to evaluate vascular complications after diagnostic coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) from the common femoral artery.
Patients and methods: This prospective cohort study was carried out over a year period, from February 2008 till January 2009, at the Iraqi Center for the Heart Disease and Ibn Al-Bitar Hospital for Cardiac Surgery. A total number of 2400 patients underwent 3600 procedures, diagnostic coronary angiography (2196) and PCI(1404) via their common femoral arteries were included in this study.
Result: A total 40