Journal and News Scan

Patient Care and General Interest

Cardiac arrest survivors gathered at Basildon Hospital in the UK to share their stories and raise awareness, while attempting to set a world record for most cardiac arrest survivors at one gathering.

The University of Washington in the US joins a growing list of institutions that offer hearts from hepatitis C-positive donors to patients on the transplant waiting list, as evidence accumulates that the virus can be safely treated in organ recipients.

Drugs and Devices

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has approved the Perceval sutureless valve from LivaNova for treating aortic valve disease.

Research, Trials, and Funding

Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles in the US and from Edwards Lifesciences trained a machine-learning algorithm to predict intraoperative hypotension using physiological data that is routinely collected during surgery.

Swedish researchers have found an association between invasive procedures such as coronary artery bypass grafting and infective endocarditis, and the accompanying editorial postulated that improving sterile technique and procedures for infection control when possible may prove more beneficial than administering prophylactic antibiotics.

Research presented at the recent American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego, California, evaluated patient refusal of lung cancer treatment, finding that US patients with early stage disease were more likely to refuse surgical treatment if they did not have insurance or if they were covered by Medicaid.

Antonides and colleagues present fundamental concepts of cost–effectiveness analysis (CEA) and they discuss the interpretation of these analyses. CEAs of new treatment strategies are being increasingly reported in the literature and national reports, and governments and healthcare payers frequently require a CEA to aid in the decision of whether to fund a new treatment or not. The authors consider a real-world example CEA, comparing transcatheter to surgical aortic valve replacement for intermediate-risk patients.

Patient Care and General Interest

A charity bazaar raised money for a Shanghai Chest Hospital project that offers free heart surgery to children with congenital heart disease in China.

Trillium Health Partners and Saint Elizabeth Health Care in Ontario, Canada, have been recognized with the Canadian College of Health Care Leader’s 3M Health Care Quality Team Award for their Putting Patients at the Heart Program, which focuses on postoperative care for cardiac patients.

Drugs and Devices

AtriCure and Baheal Pharmaceutical Group have agreed to a partnership for the latter to distribute AtriCure’s surgical ablation devices in China.

Research, Trials, and Funding

Survival after congenital heart surgery is improving; however, researchers from Minnesota, USA, find that mortality for this group of patients remains higher than in the general population, even for relatively mild structural defects.

Researchers from Ontario, Canada, find lower survival and higher likelihood of readmission for heart failure in patients who required a permanent pacemaker after transcatheter aortic valve replacement compared to patients who did not need a pacemaker.

Analysis of the Framingham Heart Study cohorts suggests that quitting smoking substantially lowers lung cancer risk, even within five years of quitting, although the risk for former smokers remains higher than for never-smokers.

Dobrovie and colleagues performed a retrospective analysis of mitral regurgitation (MR) in 128 patients who had a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implanted. The authors found that even severe MR improved following LVAD implantation without intraoperative repair of the valve. Survival after one and three years for patients with severe preoperative MR was comparable to LVAD patients with none to moderate preoperative MR.