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Journal and News Scan

Source: CNN
Author(s): Jacqueline Howard, Raenu Charles

A new study shows that white heart transplant patients are twice as likely to receive a heart transplant or ventricular assist device as Black heart transplant patients, perpetuating existing inequalities in healthcare access. Experts emphasize that this is due to differences in education and access, not biological determinants. Read the original study here.

Source: News @ Northeastern
Author(s): Cynthia McCormick Hibbert
A new research project, Healthcare Enabled by AI in Real-Time (HEART), aims to capture data from cardiac ICU monitors to analyze and predict a variety of different risk factors. Physicians can use the level of risk assigned by the data to each recovering cardiac surgery patient to determine if a patient needs more intense treatment before complications occur. Healthcare workers involved in critical care praise the project as a crucial advancement in the field.
Source: Al Arabiya English
Author(s): Jennifer Bell
An infant born prematurely with a double-outlet right ventricle became the youngest ever patient to undergo a ventricular switch procedure. In this rare case, the ventricular septal defect was remote, preventing a standard repair. The operation was successful, and the patient was discharged from the hospital at sixteen months old.
Source: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
Author(s): Kyle Freischlag, Thomas J. Lynch, Vitaly Levlev, Caitlyn Gries, John C. Keech, Evgeny V. Arshava , Tahuanty Pena, Julia A. Klesney-Tait, Kalpaj R. Parekh
Lung transplant is a potentially life-saving option for patients with Covid-19-induced acute respiratory distress and pulmonary fibrosis. This study set out to determine whether Covid-19 lung transplant patients had comparable outcomes to other lung transplant recipients with similar lung function. The results from this study, pulled from a database of 37,333 lung transplant patients of all causes and 334 from Covid-related causes, showed minimal difference in six-month survival rates.
Source: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
Author(s): Annelijn E. Slaman, MD, Giovanni Pirozzolo, MD, Wietse J. Eshuis, MD, PhD, Jacques J. G. H. M. Bergman, MD, PhD, Maarten C. C. M. Hulshof, MD, PhD, Hanneke W. M. van Laarhoven, MD, PhD, Sybren L. Meijer, MD, PhD, Suzanne S. Gisbertz, MD, PhD, and Mark I. van Berge Henegouwen, MD, PhD
Because of the major developments in the treatment of esophageal cancer in recent decades, the authors of this study conducted it at a tertiary referral center to determine if long- and short-term survival rates had improved for patients who underwent esophagectomy from 1993 to 2018. The study showed that over the last twenty-five years, clinical outcomes and overall survival rates have improved in esophagectomy patients at this center.
Source: Haaretz
Author(s): Ido Efrati

A patient from Rwanda, who traveled to a medical center in Israel to undergo an operation for the congenital disease Tetralogy of Fallot, was not able to accept transfusions of donated blood due to her faith. Through arrangements with a blood bank, the hospital managed to obtain units of blood from the patient herself to be used in the operation, allowing the life-saving procedure to take place. The operation was successful; the patient returned to recovery at the heart center.

Source: TCTMD
Author(s): Michael O’Riordan

The CSP 474 trial challenges some of the conventional knowledge around graft choice in CABG surgery, as was presented at the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS) conference. The trial results showed that when an adjunctive graft was needed in patients with coronary disease, use of the radial artery instead of a saphenous vein did not give any survival advantage. However, multiarterial grafts remain the best option when performed by an experienced surgeon.

Source: Critical Care Explorations
Author(s): Velho, Tiago R. MD; Ferreira, Ricardo MD; Willmann, Katharina PhD; Pedroso, Dora PhD; Paixão, Tiago PhD; Pereira, Rafael Maniés CLP; Junqueira, Nádia MD; Guerra, Nuno Carvalho MD; Brito, Dulce PhD; Almeida, Ana G. PhD; Nobre, Ângelo MD; Köcher, Thomas PhD; Pinto, Fausto PhD; Moita, Luís Ferreira PhD

Postoperative bleeding in patients undergoing cardiac surgery is a frequent problem, and this study aimed to test the contribution of metabolic perturbations to platelet dysfunction after cardiac surgery. Patients undergoing elective surgical aortic valve replacement were included in the study. The results suggested that preoperative levels of arachidonic acid may be more relevant than platelet count to anticipate and prevent postoperative blood loss in these patients.

Source: The Annals of Cardiothoracic Surgery
Author(s): Sowmyanarayanan Thuppal, MD, PhD; Anthony Sleiman, BA; Kanika Chawla, MD; Danuta Dynda, MD; Quadis Evans, BS; Stephen Markwell, MA; Stephen Hazelrigg, MD; Traves Crabtree, MD

With the aim to compare the pain medicines bupivacaine and liposomal bupivacaine, minimally invasive lobectomy patients were randomly assigned to either medicine and monitored after surgery. Both postoperative pain level and treatment cost were compared. The study concluded that the morphine use, long-term narcotic use, and overall cost metrics between bupivacaine and LipoB were similar.

Source: Scientific Reports
Author(s): Mercedes Fernández-Castro, José-María Jiménez, Belén Martín-Gil, María-Fe Muñoz-Moreno, Ana-Belén Martín-Santos, Isaías del Río-García, Natán Redondo-Pérez & María López
One of the main causes for concern in patients undergoing cardiac surgery is postoperative pain. This study focused on levels of preoperative anxiety, one driver of postoperative pain. After updated guidelines recommended incorporating anxiety assessment into the preoperative process, this study was performed to gauge the effectiveness of that process in evaluating postoperative pain. The results found that patients with higher preoperative anxiety experienced increased postoperative pain and needed more medication for pain management, reinforcing the updated guidelines.

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