In-Hospital Death of Critically Ill Patients Who Have Congestive Heart Failure: Does Size of Hospital Matter?
Data from the British Columbia Linked Health Database were analyzed to determine if size of hospital is associated with in-hospital death of critically ill adults whose admitting diagnosis is congestive heart failure (CHF). Patients who were <19 years of age, transferred from or to other hospitals, or who developed CHF as a complication were excluded. In unadjusted logistic regression analysis of 2616 patients, the odds ratio (OR) for in-hospital death associated with a doubling of the number of hospital beds was 1.12 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.03-1.23; P = .01). After adjustment for age, sex, CHF-specific comorbidity index, number of cardiac and noncardiac procedures, number of hospital admissions for CHF in the preceding year, and socioeconomic variables, the OR was 1.08 (95% C......
POSTED 03/10/2010 at 05:43 PM --
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Is adiponectin a bystander or a mediator in heart failure? The tangled thread of a good-natured adipokine in aging and cardiovascular disease
Abstract Adiponectin is an adipose tissue-derived adipokine abundant in human plasma. Increasing evidence from experimental studies
suggests that adiponectin plays a protective role in the cardiovascular system. However, epidemiological studies revealed
that high levels of adiponectin were associated with increased mortality and severity of congestive heart failure. Furthermore,
several prospective studies indicated that high levels of adiponectin were positively correlated with increased total and
cardiovascular disease mortality in the elderly. These results are completely opposite to our expectation based on the beneficial
effects of adiponectin. Clinical observations demonstrated that plasma adiponectin levels were positively associated with
B-type natriuretic peptide ......
POSTED 03/10/2010 at 10:17 AM --
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Aastrom Announces Treatment of Final Patient in IMPACT-DCM Surgical Clinical Trial
ANN ARBOR, Mich., March 9, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. (Nasdaq:ASTMD), a leading developer of autologous cellular therapies for the treatment of severe cardiovascular diseases, today reported the final patient treatment in the company's ongoing U.S. Phase 2 surgical clinical trial designated IMPACT-DCM. Treated at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta, GA, this patient received direct injections of Aastrom's tissue repair cells for the treatment of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a severe form of congestive heart failure in which the heart becomes weakened and enlarged and cannot pump blood efficiently. With the treatment of the final patient in this trial, Aastrom is positioned to report six-month interim data on all enrolled patients later this year. (Source: ......
POSTED 03/09/2010 at 07:30 AM --
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New Heart Valve Replacement Technologies Offer Hope For High-risk Patients
A significant number of people with heart disease will benefit from less invasive transcatheter heart valve replacements in future, finds a review of updated practices in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The most effective treatment for aortic stenosis, a common heart condition that shows with angina, loss of consciousness due to lack of blood flow, congestive heart failure, or sudden death, is valve replacement. However, large cohorts of people are never referred for this surgery because they are deemed too high-risk even though the prognosis is grim without the treatment... (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)...
POSTED 03/09/2010 at 02:00 AM --
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Adrenomedullin Plasma Levels Predict Left Ventricular Reverse Remodeling after Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy
Conclusions: Significantly higher ADM levels indicate a subgroup of patients in whom reverse remodeling can be observed after CRT. Patients with lower ADM basal values before CRT could represent a group in whom the dysfunction is so advanced that no improvement can be expected. (PACE 2010; 1[ndash]8) (Source: Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology : PACE)...
POSTED 03/07/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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Effects of Phase III Cardiac Rehabilitation on Mortality and Cardiovascular Events in Elderly Patients With Stable Coronary Artery Disease.
Conclusions: Phase III CR has the beneficial effect of reducing cardiovascular events even in elderly patients with stable CAD.
PMID: 20208382 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Circulation Journal)...
POSTED 03/05/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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Cellular cardiomyoplasty and cardiac tissue engineering for myocardial therapy.
Authors: Wang F, Guan J
Heart diseases, including myocardial infarction (MI) and congestive heart failure (CHF), have high mortality rates. Both MI and CHF are characterized by cardiac muscle damage caused by massive cardiomyocyte death and reduced cardiac function. Cellular therapy aimed at using cells to improve cardiac function and/or regenerate new myocardium, has been extensively investigated for cardiac repair. Two strategies have been currently taken for cellular transplantation, including in situ cellular cardiomyoplasty and cardiac tissue engineering. The in situ cellular cardiomyoplasty strategy delivers cells directly into the infarcted myocardium. A variety of cell types has been shown to be beneficial in cardiac repair. However, this strategy is limited in terms of cell re......
POSTED 03/05/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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Journal Scan: Triage After Hospitalization With Advanced Heart Failure: The ESCAPE (Evaluation Study of Congestive Heart Failure and Pulmonary Artery Catheterization Effectiveness) Risk Model and Discharge Score (J Am Coll Cardiol 2010;55:872-878.)
The investigators used data from the ESCAPE (Evaluation Study of Congestive Heart Failure and Pulmonary Artery Catheterization Effectiveness) trial to develop a predictive model, and internally validated their approach by the bootstrapping method. They used model coefficients to generate an additive. . . (Source: Cardiosource)...
POSTED 03/05/2010 at 02:29 AM --
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Symptomatic Aortic Stenosis With Congestive Heart Failure
In the patient with severe AS who becomes hypotensive, treatment options are especially limited, and escalation of care should occur immediately. Medscape Emergency Medicine (Source: Medscape Today Headlines)...
POSTED 03/04/2010 at 09:06 AM --
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Aldosterone Antagonists in Patients With Heart Failure [Letters]
(Source: JAMA)...
POSTED 03/02/2010 at 02:50 PM --
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Aldosterone Antagonists in Patients With Heart Failure [Letters]
(Source: JAMA)...
POSTED 03/02/2010 at 02:50 PM --
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Aldosterone Antagonists in Patients With Heart Failure--Reply [Letters]
(Source: JAMA)...
POSTED 03/02/2010 at 02:50 PM --
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Lp-PLA2 as a Marker of Cardiovascular Diseases
Abstract Inflammation lies at the base of endothelial dysfunction, eventually leading to plaque formation. The degree of inflammation
defines the “vulnerability” of plaque to rupture. Numerous strategies have been adopted to identify and eventually treat high-risk
vulnerable plaque. Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) has emerged as one such candidate marker of inflammation that may play a direct role in the formation of rupture-prone plaque.
Epidemiologic studies have clearly demonstrated the prognostic ability of increased Lp-PLA2 levels and their association with increased risk of future coronary and cerebrovascular events. Moreover, Lp-PLA2 might have similar predictive power for both incident coronary heart disease in initially healthy individuals as we......
POSTED 03/02/2010 at 04:07 AM --
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Synthesis and anti-congestive heart failure activity of novel levosimendan analogues
Abstract A series of levosimendan analogues were designed and synthesized, employing the Friedel–Crafts reaction, hydrolysis, and cyclization
from the key intermediate compound R(−)-6-(4-aminophenyl)-5-methyl-4, 5-dihydro-3(2H)-pyridazinone, which was obtained from the starting material, acetanilide.
These compounds, except 1b, exhibited potent anti-congestive heart failure activities, especially the compounds 1e and 1k, which showed more effective action than levosimendan.
Content Type Journal ArticleCategory Original ResearchDOI 10.1007/s00044-010-9319-0Authors
Lisheng Wang, Guangxi University College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Nanning 530004 ChinaHongxiang Zhou, Guangxi University College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Nanning 530004 ChinaBin Ya......
POSTED 03/02/2010 at 04:06 AM --
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Health Policy Research Roundup: Length Of Hospital Stays, Analyses Of Obama's Reform Proposals
This study compares patients treated for pneumonia and congestive heart failure (CHF) and finds that high-cost hospitals don't always deliver better care. The researchers, who based their analysis on the data from 3,146 hospitals in the 2004 to 2006 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR), report that "risk-adjusted costs of care for CHF and pneumonia varied widely between hospitals, although hospital cost-of-care patterns seemed stable over time and correlated across conditions... (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)...
POSTED 03/01/2010 at 03:00 AM --
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Health Policy Research Roundup: Length Of Hospital Stays, Analyses Of Obama's Reform Proposals
This study compares patients treated for pneumonia and congestive heart failure (CHF) and finds that high-cost hospitals don't always deliver better care... (Source: HIV / AIDS News From Medical News Today)...
POSTED 03/01/2010 at 03:00 AM --
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Hypertension and Cognitive Function in the Elderly
Alzheimer's disease is the most prevalent and common form of cognitive impairment, ie, dementia, in the elderly followed in second place by vascular dementia due to the microangiopathy associated with poorly-controlled hypertension. Besides blood pressure elevation, advancing age is the strongest risk factor for dementia. Deterioration of intellectual function and cognitive skills that leads to the elderly patient becoming more and more dependent in his, her, activities of daily living, ie, bathing, dressing, feeding self, locomotion, and personal hygiene. It has been known and demonstrated for many years that lowering of blood pressure from a previous hypertensive point can result in stroke prevention yet lowering of blood pressure does not prevent the microangiopathy that leads to white ......
POSTED 02/28/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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Eroded Pacemaker in an Elderly Patient
An 84-year-old man with severe ischemic cardiomyopathy and history of congestive heart failure was transferred to our hospital for biventricular implantable cardioverter defibrillator pocket erosion. He had originally undergone dual-chamber pacemaker implantation for intermittent complete atrioventricular block in 2000. He then developed worsening heart failure symptoms in the setting of declining left ventricular (LV) systolic function, and the device was upgraded to a biventricular system in 2006. There was initial improvement that disappeared due to LV lead dislodgement. Attempted LV lead revision in July 2007 was not successful. Two weeks later he underwent epicardial LV lead placement via mini-thoracotomy. Postoperatively he had ongoing discomfort at the wound, and in December 2007 he......
POSTED 02/28/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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Interpretation and use of natriuretic peptides in non-congestive heart failure settings.
Authors: Tsai SH, Lin YY, Chu SJ, Hsu CW, Cheng SM
Natriuretic peptides (NPs) have been found to be useful markers in differentiating acute dyspneic patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) and emerged as potent prognostic markers for patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). The best-established and widely used clinical application of BNP and NT-proBNP testing is for the emergent diagnosis of CHF in patients presenting with acute dyspnea. Nevertheless, elevated NPs levels can be found in many circumstances involving left ventricular (LV) dysfunction or hypertrophy; right ventricular (RV) dysfunction secondary to pulmonary diseases; cardiac inflammatory or infectious diseases; endocrinology diseases and high output status without decreased LV ejection fraction. Even in ......
POSTED 02/28/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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Frequency and causes of combined obstruction and restriction identified in pulmonary function tests in adults.
CONCLUSIONS: Combined obstruction and restriction occurs infrequently and is more commonly caused by a combination of pulmonary parenchymal and non-pulmonary disorders. Pulmonologists' impressions regarding the frequency and causes are generally discordant with the observed frequencies.
PMID: 20196880 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Respiratory Care)...
POSTED 02/28/2010 at 06:00 PM --
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