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Journal and News Scan
November 20, 2020
Submitted by: Emily Robinson
Philipp Angleitner et al. present a retrospective study regarding incidence and outcome of bloodstream infections in LVAD patients. The incidence of bloodstream infections is 32.1% within the first year. This event was associated with increased risk of death and stroke. Risk factors of bloodstream infections were identified as lower albumin and ECMO/IABP prior to LVAD implantation.
November 20, 2020
Submitted by: Emily Robinson
The authors used The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Database to evaluate cerebral perfusion strategies for type A aortic dissection.
November 17, 2020
Submitted by: Aristotle Protopapas
A latge RCT of the first myosin inhibitor in severe chronic heart failure: somewhat difficult to interpret results, as deaths were slightly higher in the intervention group while there was no 'significant' benefit in cardiovascular deaths. The authors discuss the possibility of benefit in lower ejection fractions and proceed to discuss and present subgroups in an effort to glean some granularity in indications for omecamtiv mecarbil.
November 16, 2020
Submitted by: Tom C. Nguyen
This free online course provides a series of step-wise presentations for developing a minimally invasive valve program with contributions from experts in the fielid.
Prevalence of Complications Following Unifocalization and Pulmonary Artery Reconstruction Procedures
November 16, 2020
Submitted by: Emily Robinson
Techniques of unifocalization and pulmonary artery reconstructions have been developed to treat complex disorders of pulmonary artery development. The objective of this study was to document the prevalence of complications in these patients. The data demonstrate that the median value for duration of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) was 473 minutes, number of complications was five, and length of stay was 24 days. Major adverse cardiac events occurred in 11% of patients. Notably, while complications were relatively frequent, the overall outcomes were generally favorable. Importantly, CPB time had a poor correlation with total number of complications and hospital length of stay; a finding that is different from what has been observed in relation to other complex congenital or adult cardiac operations.
November 16, 2020
Submitted by: Jessica Luc
In this important article published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery by Drs. Preventza et al, they report on the sex, racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular trials in the US. The authors conclude that targeted focus and leadership is needed in addressing these disparities to ensure that the population studied in cardiovascular trials is consistent with the patient population that we treat.
November 16, 2020
Submitted by: Jessica Luc
This article from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Virtual Conference Taskforce provides recommendations applicable to all virtual meetings and beyond with focused dicscussion on timezones, diversity/inclusion and how to optimize participant interactivity and networking.
Read the full article in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery here at this link -> https://www.annalsthoracicsurgery.org/article/S0003-4975(20)31816-6/fulltext
November 12, 2020
Submitted by: Emily Robinson
This article examines the use of lungs from older donors and associated survival of recipients.
November 12, 2020
Submitted by: Aristotle Protopapas
The initial experience from Ann Arbor throughout a quarter of a century in malperfusion syndrome from type B (De Bakey III) aortic dissection is presented in this paper, juxtaposing early fenestrating and adjunct endovascular techniques to conservative treatments.
Half of the relatively young patients were not alive after ten years, although radiological success was claimed in more than nine out of ten cases.
The growing interest in early intervention for type B, and the advances in endovascular and hybrid solutions for aortic disease will rend this retrospective manuscript an interesting read.
November 9, 2020
Submitted by: Wei-Guo Ma
In a press release early this morning, Pfizer and BioNTech accounced the results of their vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2 in the first interim efficacy analysis of its Phase 3 clinical study.
This vaccine candiate, BNT162b2, was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in 94 participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.