The data are more in keeping with the alternative hypothesis. That is, the viral infection produced an acute disturbance of myocardial electrical and mechanical function that healed (that is, disappeared) with time—not unlike the improvement in electrical and mechanical function following acute ischemic injury. A major constraint of this study…
The natural history of our patients, with no clinical cardiac dysfunction, was very good and included both normalization of acute-phase segmental wall motion abnormalities, as well as significant improvement in global left ventricular systolic function. In terms of specificity, were the observed BSPM differences a direct result of myocardial cellular…
This study has three major findings. First, patients with common acute viral illnesses had no cardiac symptom, had normal results of cardiac clinical examinations and had largely normal qualitative electrocardiographic and echocardiographic patterns. Second, despite the normal clinical findings and the low incidence of abnormal qualitative findings on nonin-vasive testing,…
Recuperative Phase Three patients refused follow-up evaluation. Of the 29 patients reexamined, 28 improved their functional class and 27 returned to normal functional capacity (Table 1); two patients complained of fatigue. None had cardiac symptoms and all continued to have normal examinations except for one patient (patient 23; Table 1)…
Acute Phase The clinical, infectious disease, electrocardiographic and echocardiographic data of the 32 study subjects are summarized in Table 1. As indicated in Table 1, based on the virologic screening tests, the 32 patients were arbitrarily divided into three subgroups. Group 1 (mononucleosis syndrome) was comprised of five patients with…
Infectious Disease Investigations Patients who exhibited pharyngitis, cervical lymphadenopathy, fever, lymphocytosis and atypical lymphocytes in the blood smear were classified as having a mononucleosis syndrome. The following tests were carried out: Paul Bunnell, antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) capsid antigen, and nuclear antigen by microimmunofluorescence. Antibodies to cytomegalovirus (CMV) were…
Protocol In addition to a complete history and physical examination, a standard 12-lead electrocardiogram, 120-lead body surface potential map (BSPM), 24-hour ambulatory electrocardiogram, time-motion and real-time echocardiograms and multiple infectious disease diagnostic procedures were performed during the acute phase. Clinical examination and noninvasive cardiac testing were repeated during the recuperative…