Feature Channels: Cardiovascular Health

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Touchdowns scored during CFL post-season and Grey Cup raise money to support advanced heart failure patients

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Older baby boomers—those born between 1945 and 1954—are the “stroke-healthiest generation,” according to a Rutgers study that found the lowest incidence of ischemic stroke in this age group within the past 20 years. In contrast, the rate of stroke more than doubled in Generation X, people born between 1965 and 1974, during the same time period.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Bernice Morrow, Ph.D., at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and collaborators at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) a five-year, $7.5 million grant to study the genetics of congenital heart abnormalities.

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The Peter Munk Cardiac Centre has reached a major milestone within its Mechanical Circulatory Support Program - the largest mechanical heart program in Canada - implanting a 200th patient with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD).

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Hypertension and prehypertension in children often go undiagnosed, according to a new study published today in Pediatrics. The study focused on children with abnormal blood pressures across the United States, and is the first to show a widespread underdiagnosis of these conditions by pediatricians in children ages 3 to 18.

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Computer algorithms can automatically interpret echocardiographic images and distinguish between pathological hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and physiological changes in athletes’ hearts, according to research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), published online yesterday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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Heart disease, the leading cause of death in America, can be combatted by implementing a simple walking regimen. Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York found that moderately intensive walking improves cardiovascular risk factors in the short term.

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A suite of sensors can predict heart failure events by detecting when a patient’s condition is worsening, according to Dr. John Boehmer, professor of medicine, Penn State College of Medicine.

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Around 1 per cent of the population carry a gene which could mean they have hearts ‘primed to fail’.

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Dr. Eric Olson, Director of the Hamon Center and Chairman of Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, was recognized nationally and locally for his academic mentoring prowess, along with his pioneering research into tissue regeneration and gene editing.

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• New research estimates the projected lives that would be saved if patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease underwent intensive blood pressure lowering. • The findings will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2016 November 15–20 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL.

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Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Jeffrey W. Olin, DO, FAHA, Professor of Cardiology and Director of the Vascular Medicine and Vascular Diagnostics Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, received awards at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions, November 12-16, 2016.

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Cooper will join Joseph Tector as co-director of UAB’s Xenotransplantation Program with their research geared toward using genetically modified pigs to facilitate kidney transplants in humans.

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• In patients with chronic kidney disease, dietary sodium restriction reduced albuminuria (an indicator of kidney dysfunction) and blood pressure, whereas paricalcitol (a vitamin D receptor activator) in itself had no significant effect on these measures. • The combination of paricalcitol and a low sodium diet resulted in the lowest albuminuria levels in patients.

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In mouse experiments, researchers have shown how aging and excess dietary fat create signals that lead to heart failure after a heart attack. Clarifying the mechanism of this harmful pathway is important because nearly 5 million people in the United States suffer heart failure as an age-related disease following heart attacks.

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As conventional fee-for-service models become less viable, cardiologists will need to participate in emerging payment models, according to a review published by GW researcher Steven Farmer, M.D., Ph.D., in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology.

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A newer generation left ventricular assist device (LVAD) provides better outcomes for patients with advanced heart failure at six months compared to its predecessor, according to a new study. Researchers presented data from the MOMENTUM 3 trial at the 2016 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association and also co-published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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New research from Saint Louis University finds that the prices for commonly used generic heart failure drugs varies widely.

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Cedars-Sinai health investigators will use a $1.2 million grant from a state precision medicine initiative to design a system using remote monitoring to predict heart attacks and other cardiovascular events. In this study, the research team will look for the earliest signs of cardiovascular disease by monitoring patients remotely with a specialized watch that measures activity, sleep, heart rate and stress levels.

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Atrial fibrillation patients who use the drug, warfarin, to prevent harmful blood clots from forming in their hearts to lower risk of stroke are at higher risk of developing dementia than patients who use warfarin for non-atrial fibrillation conditions, according to a new study from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute.

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The prospect of creating artery “banks” available for cardiovascular surgery, bypassing the need to harvest vessels from the patient, could transform treatment of many common heart and vascular ailments. But it’s a big leap from concept to reality.

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When patients suffer from atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, they are at considerably higher risk for blood clots and stroke. However, when hospitalized, half of these patients do not receive medications that could help prevent such complications, according to research being presented Nov. 14 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.

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A new study led by clinician-researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) testing the safety and effectiveness of anticoagulant strategies for patients with atrial fibrillation who undergo stenting procedures has shown that therapies combining the anticoagulant drug rivaroxaban with either single or dual anti-platelet therapy (DAPT) were more effective in preventing bleeding complications than the current standard of care.

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Many people who experience chest pain but don’t have a heart attack breathe a big sigh of relief when a stress test comes back negative for blockages in their blood vessels. But a new study by cardiac researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City found they may not be off the hook after all.

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Research published by a Houston Methodist team led by John Cooke, M.D., Ph.D., received high accolades at this year’s American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.

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Pioneering Surgeons Have Been on the Forefront of Robotic Surgery Techniques for Nearly 20 Years

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The Mount Sinai Health System and Healthfirst are, for the third year, teaming up to provide their co-branded Medicare Advantage plan for Manhattan residents — the Healthfirst Mount Sinai Select (HMO) plan — during the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period.

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Depression has been known to be associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes, but if patients who are depressed attend cardiac rehabilitation after heart surgery, their risk of death is significantly reduced, according to a new study.

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Two differing blood clot prevention medications are just as safe and effective for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention, a non-surgical procedure to open blood vessels narrowed by plaque buildup, according to a new study.

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Atrial fibrillation patients with a prior history of stroke who undergo catheter ablation to treat the abnormal heart rhythm lower their long-term risk of a recurrent stroke by 50 percent, according to new research from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute

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While patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases such as RA or spondyloarthritis are at increased risk for CVD, too few are prescribed preventive medications or meeting target goals to prevent heart-related events, according to new research findings presented this week at the 2016 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington.

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Over a 15-year period, people with RA may have double the risk of CV events as those in the general population, rates that are similar to people with type-2 diabetes, according to new research findings presented this week at the 2016 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington.

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Two new studies measure the prevalence of myocardial inflammation in RA patients without known cardiovascular disease, assess how it is associated with high disease activity and show how disease-modifying therapy may decrease this type of inflammation, according to new research findings presented this week at the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington.

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Children who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting are more likely to survive, and to have better neurological outcomes, when they receive bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Researchers studying a large U.S. registry of cardiac arrests compared outcomes for two bystander resuscitation techniques, and also recommend improving provision of bystander CPR in minority communities to improve outcomes in children.

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The worldwide cardiothoracic surgery community is aware of the public health issue with recent heater-cooler infection findings traced to a manufacturing facility and has actively engaged in understanding the cause and developing measures to lower the risk and occurrences of these infections.

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The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) announced that it will launch a new international journal focusing on the diagnosis and treatment of structural heart disease and the importance of the heart team in managing these disorders.

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Physicians, fellows, and researchers from Mount Sinai Health System are presenting late-breaking clinical trials and research updates at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, LA, November 12-15, 2016.

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African-Americans have more rigidity of the aorta, the major artery supplying oxygen-rich blood to the body, than Caucasians and Hispanics, according to a study by UT Southwestern Medical Center cardiologists.

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A new study finds that heart surgery patients’ chances of survival depends in part on the overall previous level of teamwork among all the physicians who cared for them across their surgery preparation, operation, hospitalization and recuperation.

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A new study of patients treated with intensive statin therapy reveals intracoronary imaging evidence of plaque stabilization associated with improved cholesterol transport and distinct transcriptomic perturbations

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The latest research and features on obesity in the Obesity News Source.

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Results from a randomized, multicenter trial failed to show non-inferiority of hybrid, ultra-thin strut sirolimus-eluting stents (Osiro SES) with a biodegradable polymer compared to thin-strut everolimus-eluting stents (Xience EES) with a durable polymer in terms of in-segment late lumen loss in successfully treated chronic total occlusions. In addition, although the rate of binary restenosis was low overall in this complex lesion subset, it was higher with the Osirio SES compared with the Xience EES.

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Results from the U.S. real-world, post-FDA approval experience of the Watchman device found high procedural success and low complication rates despite implantations by a large percentage of new operators. The Watchman device was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March 2015 for left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAC) to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF).

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Results from TRANSFORM-OCT, a prospective, randomized trial using optical coherence tomography (OCT) to evaluate strut coverage and neoatherosclerosis (NA) found that bioresorbable polymer-based drug-eluting stents (BP-EES) are comparable to durable polymer-based drug-eluting stents (DP-ZES).

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To better understand why some people adapt well to life at high altitude while others don’t, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine studied red blood cells derived from representatives of both groups living in the Andes Mountains. The study reveals that high-altitude, low-oxygen dwellers prone to chronic mountain sickness produce massive amounts of red blood cells thanks to overproduction of the enzyme SENP1.

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The CardioVascular Institute (CVI) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has transformed the delivery of cardiac care with the opening of the new Cardiac Direct Access Unit (CDAc). The first of its kind in New England, the outpatient unit offers immediate evaluation and care, allowing many individuals with heart conditions to avoid preventable and costly Emergency Department visits.

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Women have about a 20 percent less chance of developing heart disease after weight-loss surgery than men, according to new research* presented today at ObesityWeek 2016, the largest international event focused on the basic science, clinical application and prevention and treatment of obesity. The annual conference is hosted by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) and The Obesity Society (TOS).

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During stroke or heart attack, tissue damage can be limited because “collateral” vessels connect the tissue to other arteries. Collateral vessels can vary greatly in size and number from one person to the next. Scientists have now implicated the Rabep2 gene as a major contributor to variation.

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Cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, kills more than 800,000 Americans each year. We know that too much salt may contribute to high blood pressure and increased cardiovascular risk. According to a new study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American children are consuming sodium at levels that far exceed the daily recommended limit. Taste preferences for high sodium foods, formed as children, follow individuals into adulthood and put them at increased risk for developing cardiovascular problems later in life.

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The 2016 Mount Sinai ADVANCED Heart Disease Symposium is a one-day intensive state-of-the-art review of heart failure and advanced cardiac care, consisting of didactic lectures, debates and expert panel discussions of emerging or controversial topics in heart failure, mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplantation.