Posttransplant primary heart dysfunction and myocardial stunning.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Heart↗
Biomedical subjects
G Dayoub
Publications and source records attributed to G Dayoub.
[Diagnostic value of echocardiography under dobutamine in everyday practice].
In order to evaluate the place of dobutamine echocardiography in everyday practice, this test and a stress ECG were performed in 34 patients referred for diagnostic or assessment coronary angiography. Dobutamine, administered in 3-minute stages from 5 to 30 micrograms/kg/min, was well tolerated. The anti-ischaemic treatment was continued in 26 patients before dobutamine echocardiography and in 15 patients before the stress ECG. The electrocardiographic, echocardiographic and angiographic documents were each analysed by 2 independent observers. Dobutamine echocardiography was considered to be positive in the presence of the development of a new abnormality of segmental kinetics or when abnormality of segmental kinetics was identified outside of the territory of infarction. With reference to coronary angiography, the sensitivity of stress ECG and dobutamine echocardiography was 46% and 42%, respectively, and the specificity was 75% and 88%, respectively; the sensitivity of each test was low, probably because of fake tests. The combination of the two tests improved the sensitivity (69%) without altering the specificity (75%). Dobutamine echocardiography could usefully complete a negative stress ICG whenever a false-negative result is suspected to avoir wrongly reassuring some patients and to allow appropriate management.
Adult↗
[Introduction to meta-analytic methodology].
General considerations about meta-analysis and the different steps of this technique are successively discussed: definition of the main objective, identification of the outcome, description of the retrieval and selection of trials, description of the statistical analysis and interpretation of the results. Advantages and drawbacks of the meta-analytical technique are then described: 1) scientific approach, possible quantification of the therapeutic effect, increase of the power of a future clinical trial, synthesis of contradicting results, assessment of the homogeneity, subgroup analysis, analysis of sensibility, scientific collaboration, help for therapeutic information. 2) retrospective approach, inconsistency among trials, potential biases, persistence of some unsolved methodological problems, difficulties for a critical reading and for the interpretation of conclusions. In addition, some examples of published meta-analyses are given to illustrate the advantages and limits mentioned above.
Humans↗