This work brings us evidence that yoga-based cardiac rehabilitation improves how patients feel about their health and reduces the time it takes them to resume the activities they could perform before experiencing an infarction. That is important information with impeccable timing. The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted most of the assistance we offer to cardiovascular patients,...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Chronic total occlusions (CTO) are still one of the greatest challenges in our field, thus forcing the development of different complex strategies to resolve them. Additionally, the use of imaging techniques during these procedures has improved long-term results. The CONSISTENT CTO (Conventional Antegrade Versus Sub-Intimal Synergy Stenting in Chronic Total Occlusions)...
The CLASP looked into patients treated with the new device for transcatheter mitral repair called PASCAL and showed low complications rate, high survival rate, significant mitral regurgitation reduction and improved quality of life at one year. In July 2019 we published on our web page the 30 year outcomes of the PASCAL device () which...
The DANish Acute Myocardial Infarction 2 (DANAMI-2) trial showed the 30-day superiority of patient transport to a primary angioplasty site vs. fibrinolysis at the hospital where the patient had been originally admitted. Those 30-day results became a landmark in the history of interventional cardiology. However, some suspected that such initial benefit could fade away over...
Nearly all prostheses for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) commercially available at present are adequate for most patients. However, there are certain subgroups, relatively small, that could benefit from a particular one. Yesterday we went over the best suited for small annuli, which turned out to be the self-expandable in general and the Evolut PRO...
After 3 years, SOLACI returns to Ecuador -this time to the beautiful city of Manta- to continue promoting the development of interventional cardiology in Latin America. Do not hesitate to participate in this important event that will undoubtedly be enriching for medical practice and, also, to improve the quality of life of patients in our...
In cases where it is difficult to demonstrate the improvement of a drug or a device in hard endpoints such as mortality, we should look for softer and easier to prove endpoints. The problem is that these soft endpoints are often subjective (such as sensation of shortness of breath or angina pectoris) and they could...
1- Incidence and Prognosis of Heart Valve Embolization The incidence of peri-procedural transcatheter heart valve embolization and migration (TVEM) is as low as 1%. However, it is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Read more HERE 2- 1000 MitraClips: Results from the World’s Most Experienced Site In September 2008, interventional physicians at the Heart and...
After the large studies which set provisional stenting as the preferred strategy to treat bifurcations comes the double kissing crush technique (DK crush) to break the mold once again. This time, the DK crush technique is tested against provisional stenting in the left main, with a 3-year follow-up. The DKCRUSH-V, soon to be published in...
Courtesy of SBHCI. Between 16 and 18% of coronary artery lesions in patients with chronic stable CAD are chronic total occlusions (CTO). CTO revascularization could benefit symptomatic patients, but it remains unclear whether such complex procedure is safe in the long run, given the study outcomes on PCI in CAD so far. This study presented...