EXCEL patients with chronic kidney disease and left main coronary artery disease have higher rates of acute renal failure and other events compared with the general population. However, acute renal failure was less frequent with angioplasty than with surgery, while other events such as death, stroke, or infarction at 3 years were similar for both revascularization...
The SYNTAX trial had a 5-year follow-up, but the SYNTAXES (“ES” for extended survival) was specifically designed to find out comparative mortality of both treatments (PCI or surgery) at 10 years in patients with three vessel and/or left main lesions. This study retrospectively compared survival data at long term of 897 patients randomized to surgery...
The rates of direct stenting are higher among patients randomized to thrombus aspiration. The rates of clinical events and myocardial reperfusion did not differ significantly between a direct stenting strategy vs. predilation and stenting, and no interaction was observed as regards thrombus aspiration. Several preliminary studies have emerged from the hypothesis that a direct stenting...
Successful rechanneling of a chronic total occlusion (currently around 90%) leads to significant improvement in quality of life and symptom frequency in patients with stable chronic angina compared with optimal medical treatment alone. These results are promising and what we ultimately expected, although symptoms, as a primary endpoint in themselves, are in the eye of...
Published 5-year results had been neutral for bilateral vs. single internal-thoracic artery grafts, but, at the time, surgeons argued that the time period analyzed was not enough and that a difference would be observed after 10 years of follow-up, once the trial finished. Such follow-up was presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2018...
The EXCEL study, originally presented at TCT 2016 and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), showed that angioplasty and surgery in patients with left main coronary artery disease have similar rates of mortality, infarction, and stroke at 3 years. This sub-study, recently published in J Am Coll Cardiol Intv, adds that the...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Tricuspid regurgitation (TR), both isolated or associated with other left valve diseases, has been associated with higher rates of heart failure hospitalization and of cardiovascular death. Recent studies in elderly high-risk patients who underwent percutaneous treatment of left valve disease have shown the presence of TR to be associated with...
Is it possible for a soccer match to trigger an infarction? Is it possible for the stress derived from watching our national team play to trigger a cardiovascular event? Many might think that these are exaggerations. However, not only is it possible, but it has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt for some...
Aortic stenosis increases afterload creating hypertrophy as a compensation mechanism to maintain minute volume. This leads to left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (LVDD). More than half of patients presenting aortic stenosis have LVDD and myocardial fibrosis, which is a mortality predictor in surgery. At present, there is contradicting evidence in TAVR. The study looked...
The transradial access is the preferred access site for patients undergoing acute coronary syndrome. Compared to the transfemoral access site, it reduces the risk of all cause death, vascular complications and major bleeding. Radial artery occlusion is the most frequent vascular complication associated to this approach, though it rarely results in clinical consequences such as ischemia, given the...