The outcomes of this work are important to plan valve replacement with the largest possible prosthesis allowed by patient anatomy in the index procedure. As a worldwide trend, increasingly more patients are receiving bioprostheses, which have improved a lot but still tend to become deteriorated and require a valve-in-valve procedure if the patient is no...
EuroPCR 2020 | EVOQUE: New Transcatheter Mitral Valve Replacement System, Promises at Short Term and Future Hope
Transeptal transcatheter mitral valve replacement offers a less invasive alternative vs. surgery and with fewer anatomical limitations than transcatheter repair (e.g. MitraClip) in patients with severe mitral valve failure. The first patients treated with the new system EVOQUE were included between September 2018 and October 2019 and its outcomes were presented at the virtual EuroPCR...
EuroPCR 2020 | Sudden Death Increase Two to Three Times While MI Rate Falls
The number of sudden deaths reported around the world is on the rise in Covid-19 times. These deaths are caused either by the virus and its capacity to produce lethal arrhythmias or by the fact that patients are staying away from hospitals and are not being examined. Cardiologists were the first to warn that the...
Olive Oil and Cardiovascular Risk: The Higher the Consumption, the Lower the Risk?
High olive oil intake was associated with lower risk of coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease in two large prospective cohorts of men and women. The substitution of margarine, butter, mayonnaise, and dairy fat with olive oil can have a significant impact on cardiovascular health. The benefits of olive oil intake have been well studied...
Effects of Health Promotion Since Childhood
All clinical practice guidelines indicate healthy lifestyle recommendations and, as cardiologists, we have slowly but surely implemented such practice. However, patients come to us once they have had health problems. What would happen if people had these recommendations at an earlier stage in their life? Would that prevent them from ever becoming patients? There was...
The Fellow’s Corner
The Fellow’s Corner is a space for interaction and discussion dedicated exclusively to continuing medical training and education for all interventional fellows in Latin America. In this section, we discuss real-world clinical cases from our daily practice, with the purpose of sharing experiences and reaching an agreement on possible treatment courses for different situations. Become...
Stenting of Lipid-Rich vs Fibrous and calcified Plaques: Different Prognosis?
Coronary PCI with contemporary drug eluting stents (DES) in lipidic-rich plaques were not associated with increased periprocedural events at long term compared against plaques with no significant lipidic composition. This study recently published in J Am Coll Cardiol looked into the association between lipidic rich plaques detected by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and clinical events in...
Non-Invasive Diagnosis of Coronary Spasm: Can We Recommend it?
Conventional non-invasive testing to detect obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) by induced myocardial ischemia are not useful to diagnose epicardial or microvascular coronary artery spasm. Invasive testing requires the intracoronary injection of acetylcholine or ergonovine (the latter can also be endovenous). These tests are more often done in Asian countries, and rarely done in...
Honduras Sessions 2020
XLI SOLACI Regional Sessions – 15° Central América & the Caribbean Region. June 24th & 25th, 2020. Due to the world health crisis of COVID-19, this year we held the Honduras Sessions 2020 through the Zoom Plataform. Rewatch both webinars of the Honduras Sessions 2020 on our Youtube account. Day 1 | Doctors – Coronary Interventionis...
Estimating the Risk of Infection for Healthcare Personnel
Roughly one out of every 100 healthcare workers at hospitals receiving COVID-19 patients become infected. Statistics are not uniform for all corners of earth, and they do not indicate that being on the front line necessarily entails higher risk. A large analysis conducted in the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic (Wuhan, China) showed that 110...