Journal and News Scan

On Wednesday March 13, the ACC Quality Summit announced in New Orleans that beginning in mid-2019, hospitals performing transcatheter valve repair and replacement will be able to apply for the American College of Cardiology's new Transcatheter Valve Certification.

The ACC's Transcatheter Valve Certification is an external review and certification process that will hold hospitals to specific standards for multidisciplinary teams, formalized training and shared decision-making. Participation in a national clinical registries such as the Trancathether Valve Therapy (TVT) registry is required for certification. The TVT registry tracks patient characteristics, procedural indications, and outcomes for patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement and transcatheter mitral valve repair.

According to the release, the certification will link process improvements to patient outcomes and will be “responsive to the resourcing at hospitals focused and committed to performance improvement in patient care delivery and coordination post-procedure.” Participation in the program will also connect hospitals to data which can track performance metrics and inform best practices.

Siregar and colleagues review the methods for updating existing risk prediction models, an approach that allows models that have lost their predictive power to be adjusted to new clinical situations. When appropriate, this approach can be more efficient than creating an entirely new model. They consider five methods: intercept recalibration, logistic recalibration, model revision, closed test procedure, and Bayesian modeling. The authors then illustrate the application of these methods, using data from the Netherlands Heart Registry to update the EuroSCORE II model.

With the disruptive advancement of catheter-based technologies and minimally invasive techniques in structural heart disease, surgeons must obtain the necessary skills to continue to serve this large patient population. An emergency overhaul of current structural training must occur to ensure standardized training in structural heart disease. This is vital as surgeons are uniquely positioned to offer the full spectrum of valve therapy but risk erosion of the heart team concept without urgent action. The train has left the station and this manuscript is a call to action.

Patient Care and General Interest

The American Heart Association has released a scientific statement summarizing emerging knowledge about sensitization after heart transplant.

The National Health Service England in the UK will place mobile scanning trucks in supermarket parking lots to expand lung cancer screening of people who are at high risk of developing the disease.

Engineers from Rochester, New York, USA, have embedded sensors in a toilet seat, an innovation that they hope could improve daily cardiovascular monitoring for patients with heart failure.

Drugs and Devices

Kaiser Health News has released a report detailing a US Food and Drug Administration program that allowed device-related injuries and malfunctions to be reported in a repository that was not publicly available.

Innovative Cardiovascular Solutions, LLC, announced the beginning of the European feasibility study of the next-generation of its Emblok™ Embolic Protection System for transcatheter aortic valve replacement.

Research, Trials, and Funding

Overlapping surgery is safe in most cases but it may increase poor outcomes for high-risk patients and patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting, report researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

A study from researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, USA, suggests the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib might worsen valve disease pathology, conflicting with previous findings that found the drug safe for heart patients.