Tag Archives: MRI

Dear Sirs, A few months ago, I arrived in the cardiology office around midday on Monday after a short ward round. One of our secretaries voiced the view “You don’t look right”. I was surprised when she qualified this as “looking dishevelled”. When asked what she meant, she was instantly apologetic and said “Oh I mean you look wide-eyed and agitated”. The background was that I had felt nauseous whilst driving the car early Saturday afternoon and had, in fact, stopped the car to vomit on three occasions. I assumed I had eaten something that had upset me. The following day (Sunday) I continued doing minor jobs around the house and

Introduction Cardiac sarcoidosis can present in a broad spectrum of entities ranging from a benign condition, which is diagnosed incidentally, to a potentially serious disease leading to sudden cardiac death, which only becomes apparent at autopsy, as is the case in 5% of the affected population.1 Due to its subtle, but also sometimes fatal presentation, cardiac sarcoid is hugely underdiagnosed, and awareness of such cases should be brought to light whenever possible. This case report highlights the importance of being aware of the potential presentations of cardiac involvement in patients with sarcoidosis and the general investigations and m

Details of two biomarker discovery programmes were presented by myself and other colleagues from Southampton.The early results were generated by our team, headed by Professor John Morgan, and build on several years of collaboration between cardiologists at the University Hospitals Southampton and scientists at the University of Southampton. The work hopes to advance sudden cardiac death risk stratification and ultimately move towards a more personal selection of interventions, such as implantable defibrillators. Traditional risk stratification markers, such as left ventricular function or QRS width, fail to identify those at greatest risk, or

New pocket-sized visualisation tool This new pocket-sized visualisation tool provides ultrasound technology at the point-of-care. Similar in size to a mobile phone and weighing less than one pound, it can give high quality colour images enabling physicians to take a quick look inside the body and detect disease earlier. Vscan™ is marketed by GE Healthcare and has received the CE Mark by the European Union. Heart failure report published A comprehensive review of the quality of heart failure care in England Bridging the quality gap: heart failure, has been published by The Health Foundation. It highlights that prevention is key to imp