Abstract Background: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI), the leading cause of death in Brazil, has presented regional disparities in mortality rate time trends in recent years. Previous time trend studies did not correct for cause-of-death garbage codes, which may have skewed the estimates. Objective: To analyze regional and gender-based inequalities in the AMI mortality trend in Brazil from 1996-2016. Methods: A 21-year time series study (1996-2016). Data are from the Mortality Information System and population estimates from the Brazilian Institute of […]

Dear Editor, We read with interest the short editorial written by authors Chamié and Abzaid regarding the paper “Evaluation of Myocardial Ischemia with iFR (instantaneous wave-free ratio) in the catheterization laboratory: a pilot study”. The short editorial clearly translates to us the historical evolution reasoning that we must follow when interpreting coronary physiology studies in therapeutic decision-making. Although medicine is full of binary situations for resolution, such as the presence or absence of fever by the thermometer, it is very […]

Abstract Background Multiple scoring systems have been designed to calculate the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with chest pain. There is no data on whether the HEART score outperforms TIMI and GRACE in the prediction of MACE, especially in the era of high-sensitivity troponin assay and in an exclusively Latin-American population. Objective To compare the performance of the HEART, TIMI, and GRACE scores for predicting major cardiovascular events at 30 days of follow-up, in patients who […]

Introduction Anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery (ALCAPA) is a rare congenital anomaly with a mortality of 90% by 1 year of age without surgical intervention. Nowadays the procedure of choice for correction of ALCAPA depends on the establishment of a dual coronary artery system by direct reimplantation of the anomalous left coronary artery (LCA) into the ascending aorta. However, anatomic variations of the origin of the anomalous LCA often make this aim difficult to […]

Background: Euterpe oleracea Mart. (açaí) is a fruit with high antioxidant capacity and could be an adjuvant strategy to attenuate ischemia-reperfusion injury. Objective: To evaluate the influence of açaí in global ischemia-reperfusion model in rats. Methods: Wistar rats were assigned to 2 groups: Control (C: receiving standard chow; n = 9) and Açaí (A: receiving standard chow supplemented with 5% açaí; n = 10). After six weeks, the animals were subjected to the global ischemia-reperfusion protocol and an isolated heart […]

Background: Functional assessment to rule out myocardial ischemia using coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is extremely important and data on the Brazilian population are still limited. Objective: To assess the diagnostic performance of myocardial perfusion by CCTA in the detection of severe obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) compared with single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT). To analyze the importance of anatomical knowledge to understand the presence of myocardial perfusion defects on SPECT imaging that is not identified on computed tomography (CT) […]