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The article titled "Automated screening of congestive heart failure using variational mode decomposition and texture features extracted from ultrasound images" has been retracted by the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher due to concerns about compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate references, and not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue. The investigation conducted by the publisher led to the loss of confidence in the results and conclusions of the article. Some of the authors did not respond to correspondence from the publisher regarding the retraction. Springer Nature, the publisher, remains neutral in terms of jurisdictional claims and institutional affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

Heart is an important and hardest working muscular organ of the human body. Inability of the heart to restore normal perfusion to the entire body refers to cardiac failure, which then with symptoms results in manifestation of congestive heart failure (CHF). Impairment in systolic function associated with chronic dilation of left ventricle is referred as dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). The clinical examination, surface electrocardiogram (ECG), chest X-ray, blood markers and echocardiography play major role in the diagnosis of CHF. Though the ECG manifests chamber enlargement changes, it does not possess sensitive marker for the diagnosis of DCM, whereas echocardiographic assessment can effectively reveal the presence of asymptomatic DCM. This work proposes an automated screening method for classifying normal and CHF echocardiographic images affected due to DCM using variational mode decomposition technique. The texture features are extracted from variational mode decomposed image. These features are selected using particle swarm optimization and classified using support vector machine classifier with different kernel functions. We have validated our experiment using 300 four-chamber echocardiography images (150: normal, 150: CHF) obtained from 50 normal and 50 CHF patients. Our proposed approach yielded maximum average accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 99.33%, 98.66% and 100%, respectively, using ten features. Thus, the developed diagnosis system can effectively detect CHF in its early stage using ultrasound images and aid the clinicians in their diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronary artery disease (CAD) has become the most common cause of mortality in the entire world. Homocysteine is implicated as an early atherosclerotic promoter. We studied the relationship between levels of serum homocysteine with severity of coronary artery disease. Total of 70 subjects who scheduled for coronary angiogram consented to participate in this study. In all the patients Gensini scoring system was used to assess the severity of CAD. Venous samples were taken from the patients in fasting state before angiography. Homocysteine levels in patients were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbant method and were compared with respective Genseni scores of participants. Fasting serum homocysteine levels in CAD patients were significantly higher than patients without coronary artery disease ( p < 0.001). Also Homocyseine levels correlated significantly with increasing severity of CAD ( p < 0.001). Serum homocysteine levels correlated well with the severity of CAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronary stents are tubular, mesh-like structures used to force open clogged artery. Mounted on an inflatable balloon, stent compresses calcified plaque inside atherosclerotic artery with an inflating device, which transfers the load through the compliant balloon, thus maintaining the patency of lumen. One of the contributors for success of angioplasty is type of stents, which mainly differs in its geometrical design. A clinician recommends a stent based on comparative advantages. An ideal stent should be flexible to manoeuver through tortuous artery, easy to expand, provide good scaffolding to the vessel, have less radial recoil and foreshortening, possess uniformity in expansion and induce minimum alteration in physiological blood flow dynamics. In a stent these parameters are in competition with each other and are optimized by trade-offs. The present work tries to sequentially investigate the effect of number of stent cells and type of links on the expansion and haemodynamics behaviour through computational analysis based on finite element and finite volume techniques. The study compares performance within same classes of designs rather than comparing the designs that are completely different form each other. Results show that more number of stent cells in longitudinal direction considerably decrease the radial recoil, but increase the foreshortening effect. Restenosis-prone zones are localized around the stent struts and are predominant during end of systolic phase of cardiac cycle. Shorter links are preferred for better recoil and favourable distribution of wall shear stress while longer links are preferred for favourable foreshortening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the case of a 51-year-old man with thymoma who experienced left ventricular (LV) dysfunction and myocarditis perioperatively. The presentation of cardiogenic shock linked to thymoma as an isolated regional wall motion abnormality is described. The mimicking of acute myocardial infarction by myocarditis is addressed. Considering a diagnosis of either thymoma-associated and viral myocarditis is also cited.