The aim of this study was to assess the use of measuring left atrial pressure to complement transesophageal echocardiography and doppler imaging. Procedure efficacy is measured in the cath lab by echocardiography. However, these measurements are operator dependent and might be influenced by left ventricular function and changes in left atrial compliance. The study...
SOCHICAR@SOLACI Symposium at SOCHICAR 2018 Congress
Within the 55th Chilean Congress of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, which is taking place in Concepción, Chile, SOLACI held a Joint Session with SOCHICAR on Structural Heart Disease. The moderators for this session were Dr. Mario Araya (Chile), Dr. Eugenio Marchant (Chile), and Dr. Hugo Londero (Argentina). Among the participating lecturers, the presentations by Marcio Montenegro (Percutaneous Treatment of Functional...
TCT 2018 | Mismatch After TAVR According to the TVT Registry
Prosthesis-patient mismatch (i.e. a difference between the size of the implanted prosthetic valve and the patient body size) in patients who undergo surgery is associated with worse outcomes. This may also apply to percutaneous prostheses, although that has not been well-studied yet. This work, presented at TCT 2018 and published simultaneously in JACC, analyzes this problem...
TCT 2018 | MAIN COMPARE: Angioplasty vs. Surgery for Left Main Coronary Artery Disease at 10 Years
Several studies (some of them recent, some of them not so much so) have compared left main coronary artery angioplasty and myocardial revascularization surgery. Combined, these works compose a large corpus of evidence, but follow-up has not gone beyond 5 years in any case. The main aim of this study (presented at TCT 2018 and published simultaneously...
TCT 2018 | TriValve: Mitraclip for the Tricuspid Valve
The TriValve is a multicenter, international and retrospective study of multiple devices for percutaneous intervention to treat cardiac failure. This is a sub-analysis of patients receiving the most conventional of these devices: the MitraClip. The main points assessed by this study were all cause mortality, unplanned hospitalizations, functional class, the presence of peripheral edema, and...
Frailty: What Happens When We Are Too Late in Critical Lower Limb Ischemia
This condition, now “trending” among patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), has expanded to almost all patients we treat, always with the same outcome: the prognosis is bad, so bad that it might warrant making the difficult decision of not going forward. The association between frailty and bad prognosis is easy to see and...
HIV and Peripheral Artery Disease: Acknowledging the Association
The role of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the development of vascular disease (specifically peripheral artery disease) remains unclear. Is the virus per se the direct cause of this disease or is it a consequence of dyslipidemia, one of the adverse effects of antiretrovirals? This study looked into the effect of HIV infection on peripheral...
MitraClip in Severe MR: 5 Year Mortality Rate Similar to Surgery
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Mitral regurgitation accounts for around 25% of valvular diseases and is a strong mortality predictor in heart disease. One of the challenges of this disease is that patients respond favorably to medical treatment for a long time, which makes hard to establish the right time to perform an intervention without...
See the presentations of the 2018 Guatemala Sessions
SOLACI thanks the 210 attendees ─physicians, nurses, technicians and other professionals. Without them, we would not have achieved such scientific success at these regional sessions. We would also like to extend our appreciation to the Guatemalan Cardiology Association, to the organization, and to the entire Guatemala for the hospitality and generosity they graciously bestowed upon...
Cardiac Damage: Should we start to assess it?
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. The current recommendation for aortic valve replacement is based on stenosis severity based on valvular criteria (mean transvalvular gradient, peak aortic velocity and valve index area) and the presence of symptoms, in addition to comorbidities, mainly for risk stratification. However, ventricular damage and/or its effect on cardiovascular hemodynamics are not regarded...