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
Foreign body embolization is a rare but serious iatrogenic complication that might necessitate transcatheter or even surgical retrieval. A broken double-lumen catheter was snared using a goose neck snare kit. The procedure was successful, and the patient experienced no further complications.
Potentiostatic polarization and weight loss methods have been used to investigate the corrosion behavior of carbon steel in sodium chloride solution at different concentrations (0.1, 0.4 and 0.6) M under the influence of temperatures ( 293, 298, 303, 308 and 313) K. The inhibition efficiency of the amoxicillin drug on carbon steel in 0.6 M NaCl has also been studied based on concentration and temperature. The corrosion rate showed that all salt concentrations ( NaCl solution) resulted in corrosion of carbon steel in varying ratio and 0.6 M of salt solution was the highest rate (50.46 g/m².d). The results also indicate that the rate of corrosion increases at a temperature of 313 K.. Potentiodynamic polarization studi
... Show MoreObjectives: This study aims to determine the disease’s patterns and outcomes of admission among neonates hospitalized at the neonatal care unit in Erbil City, and using the findings as a baseline for neonate’s morbidity and mortality assessment in the future. Methodology: A retrospective study carried out at neonatal care unit of Raparin pediatric teaching hospital. An instrument for data collection developed by researcher included (age, gender, cause of admission, diagnosis and outcome upon discharge and causes of death). Content validity of the instrument was determined through the use of panel ex
Numerous physiological and biochemical changes are linked to menopause. The current study was intended to examine the transforms linked to anthropometric measurements and bone-related factors. In this study of 80 women which included; they comprised 40 premenopausal women and 40 postmenopausal women. waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI), hip circumference (HC), moreover waist to hip ratio are among the anthropometric measurements (W-HR) recorded by standard procedures. The plasma samples were tested for the following biochemical parameters: bone-related parameters [calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P), uric acid (UA), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)] and serological agglutination tests [rheumat
... Show MoreThis study was conducted in Al-Salam station for Dairy cattle/private sector, for the period from 1-11-2016 to 1-11-2017, to determine the association between BTN1A1 gene polymorphism and reproductive efficiency indicator and heat tolerance in 50 Holstein cows. The results of BTN1A1 gene analysis showed a highly significant Different (P<0.01) between genotypes of BTN1A1 gene’s genotypes AA, AB the percentage were 72.00, 28.00 % respectively. Results showed that services per conception and days open was significantly (P<0.05) affected by polymorphism of BTN1A1 gene and for cows with AA genotype, there was also a significant difference (P<0.05) between the genotypes of BTN1A1 gene for IgG concentration in calves blood who belong to mother
... Show MoreThe aim of this study is to evaluate oxidative stress in diabetes mellitus (DM) Type1 by the measurement of Glucose-6-phosphate Dehydrogenase (G-6-PD), an enzyme expressed in human RBCs, is important in the generation of reduced glutathione which is the key product in oxidative stress controls. The Study was carried on 80 samples of blood and serum of National Diabetes Center (NDC). The study groups under fasting conditions and they divided as:20 samples of diabetes mellitus patients without complications and 20 samples of diabetes mellitus with cardiovascular (CV) complications and 20 samples of diabetes mellitus with Nephropathy (Neph) complications compared with 20 control group with average age (13-67) years.. The results sh
... Show MoreAssociation rules mining (ARM) is a fundamental and widely used data mining technique to achieve useful information about data. The traditional ARM algorithms are degrading computation efficiency by mining too many association rules which are not appropriate for a given user. Recent research in (ARM) is investigating the use of metaheuristic algorithms which are looking for only a subset of high-quality rules. In this paper, a modified discrete cuckoo search algorithm for association rules mining DCS-ARM is proposed for this purpose. The effectiveness of our algorithm is tested against a set of well-known transactional databases. Results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing metaheuristic methods.
This study aims at identifying the role played by Public Relations in the field of security awareness of the dangers of terrorism. The research is directed to the employees at the Directorate General of Public Relations and Media at the Ministry of Interior. And that on the basis that those who play an important role in the security awareness are the security institutions, primarily the Ministry of Interior, since this Directorate is responsible for all subjects related to the public security using public relations science. It aims at identifying the functions, methods and communication tools used by the Directorate to raise awareness about the dangers of terrorism. In order to achieve the research objectives, the researcher uses the sur
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