Adult congenital heart disease is a life-long condition that requires appropriate follow-up by experts. Said follow-up is paramount to diagnosing specific and highly variable complications in a timely manner. The recently published European Society of Cardiology guidelines for the management of congenital heart disease calls for a summary of its most important aspects as “ten...
Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) results durable at 5 years to treat failed surgical bioprosthetic valves and at one year to treat valves percutaneously. Regardless the type of the failed valve, the solution is TAVR. The 5 year follow up of the PARTNER 2 valve-in-valve (ViV) showed that TAVR as treatment for failed surgical bioprosthetic...
Cardiac complications are among the most frequent in patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy for asymptomatic lesions. This excess of cardiac events in patients with no neurological symptoms of carotid stenosis is essential to balance the risk/benefit ratio of carotid endarterectomy. A routine cardiology consultation prior surgery could reduce perioperative infarction rate, general complications and even mortality. ...
Patients included in the ISCHEMIA trial who had a history of cardiac failure or ventricular function deterioration will benefit from revascularization vs. optimal medical treatment. This is a pre-specified analysis of the paradigmatic ISCHEMIA trial. The ISCHEMIA was published in March 2020 in NEJM and went somewhat unnoticed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the...
The DAPA-CKD trial has shown dapagliflozin, a SGLT2 receptor inhibitor, improves function, and reduces cardiovascular events and mortality. The latter is true regardless being or not diabetic. Patients with chronic kidney failure randomized to dapagliflozin saw improved kidney function, reduced cardiovascular events and increased survival rate. Primary end point, a combination of glomerular filtration deterioration...
01- Myocardial Injury for COVID-19 Even in Young Patients with Mild Symptoms Most young COVID-19 patients not requiring hospitalization showed abnormal cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) beyond two months after diagnosis. Read more HERE 02- Rapid Drop of Antibodies in Mild COVID-19 patients A fast drop in COVID-19 antibodies in mild patients triggers the alarm...
Patients with dysfunctional biological prosthetic valves have better outcomes with TAVR vs. surgical reintervention, beyond surgical risk. This study outcomes might even call into question the age cutoff to consider a mechanical vs. a biological prosthesis at first surgery. This analysis recently published in JACC looked at the outcomes of both possible strategies to treat...
Extending thromboembolic prophylaxis with rivaroxaban in patients hospitalized for heart conditions reduce fatal and thromboembolic events by 28% without major bleeding payback. Patients hospitalized for heart conditions are at risk of thromboembolic events, and this is why inhospital prophylaxis (in general with low molecular weight heparin) is within the standard treatment. It was not...
After 10 years, unstable or chronic coronary patients revascularized with drug-eluting stents (DES) had similar, very good outcomes regardless of whether the DES did or did not have a polymer, according to the ISAR-TEST-5 study, recently published in J Am Coll Cardiol. The 10-year device-oriented endpoints occurred in 43.8% of patients treated with a polymer-free sirolimus-eluting...
Deferral of left main coronary artery lesions using instantaneous wave-free ratio (iFR) seems to be safe. At the least, patients with deferred lesions had similar long-term prognosis to that of patients who underwent revascularization based on that same indicator. Left main coronary artery lesions were universally excluded from studies including medical treatment among the therapeutic...