According to this large European registry, drug-eluting balloons (DEBs) are competing with drug-eluting stents (DES) to treat in-stent restenosis. Drug-eluting balloons seem to work equally well for the treatment of long-term in-stent restenosis compared with new stent implantation (for the thin-strut DES registry). If DEBs can compete with DES—adding to the advantage of avoiding a...
The predecessor of this research—RIPCORD, published in 2014—showed that using fractional flow reserve (FFR) changes the treatment strategy in about 25% of patients. That marked the rise of FFR. In fact, the DEFER, FAME, and FAME 2 studies offered results consistent with the original RIPCORD. In this research, authors tested the hypothesis of systematic use of...
High risk patients undergoing elective PCI treated with a more potent antiplatelet scheme (ticagrelor) vs. the classic clopidogrel do not see a benefit in protection against periprocedural events and instead see increased costs and minor bleeding rate. These are the outcomes of the ALPHEUS study presented at AHA 2020 simultaneously published in the Lancet. Ticagrelor...
In many places worldwide, the worst part of the pandemic is still to come. Meanwhile, in other areas, the number of cases is rising again. In this context, the long-term effects of COVID-19 are starting to show. Many believe this is not a current issue, but it will definitely be a problem in the future....
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...
This document emerges from the assembly of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) and the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association (ACVC). Both associations gathered their most prominent experts, including people who worked in the European areas most affected by COVID-19. Their aim was to modify diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms to adapt the evidence collected...
There is no survival advantage with invasive coronary revascularization over initial medical treatment in patients with chronic coronary artery disease. However, revascularization did reduce the incidence of unstable angina and its symptoms, according to this new meta-analysis published in Circulation and presented virtually at EuroPCR 2020. There was no significant difference in spontaneous infarctions overall, but...
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...
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral respiratory illness that can cause a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), predisposing patients to thrombosis (both in veins and arteries) due to excessive inflammation, platelet activation, endothelial dysfunction, and stasis. In addition, many patients receiving antithrombotic therapy for different indications may now become infected with COVID-19, which can...
It’s been a while since the demanding and tough 2017 document written jointly between ACC and AHA where, with much controversy, cutoff hypertension values were taken to extreme limits. In fact, more flexible ESC guidelines came out a few months later. Despite this document, hypertension-related cardiovascular death kept increasing in the US across all age...