Prognostic implications of pericardial effusion in acute heart failure: Does size matter?

Somedegreeofpericardialeffusion(PE)occurredinupto20%ofpa-tientswithheartfailure(HF)[1].Arecentstudyshowedthatinpatientswithchronicheartfailure(CHF),evenahemodynamicallyirrelevantPEwasassociated withincreasedriskofadverseevents [2,3]. Should thesefindings be extrapolated to patients with AHF? Moreover, the patho-physiology of such association remains to be determined. Thus, thisstudy sought to evaluate the association between PE and the risk of 1-year mortality in patients with AHF.Weincluded1827consecutivepatientsadmittedforAHFintheCar-diology department of a tertiary university hospital from January 2004to July 2013. Patients with a hemodynamically compromised PE wereexcluded (n = 16). In a…

Experience in daily clinical practice of ambulatory cardioversion of atrial fibrillation treated with new oral anticoagulants.

Tricuspid Regurgitation and Mortality Risk Across Left Ventricular Systolic Function in Acute Heart Failure.

BACKGROUND Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is a common echocardiographic finding that has been related to adverse outcome under various clinical scenarios. Nevertheless, evidence supporting its prognostic value in heart failure (HF) is scarce, and, in most cases, contradictory. We evaluated the association of TR grade with 1-year all-cause mortality in acute HF (AHF). METHODS AND RESULTS: We included 1,842 consecutive patients admitted for AHF. Mean age was 72.8±11.3 years, 51% were female and 45.5% had LVEF <50%. The severity of TR was graded in non-TR, mild (1), moderate (2), moderate-severe (3) and severe (4). At 1-year follow-up, 370 patients (20.1%) had died. In patients with LVEF ≥50%, a…

Transformational leadership and absorptive capacity: an analysis of the organisational catalysts for this relationship

ABSTRACTResearch analysing the antecedents of a firm’s absorptive capacity suggests that transformational leadership (TL) is one of its main determinants. However, the few studies focusing on the relationship between these two variables do not explicitly assess why transformational leaders facilitate knowledge acquisition, sharing and retention inside firms. This paper suggests that the reason is that the former contributes to the creation of an organisational context that favours learning processes. We test our research model on a sample of 467 Spanish industrial firms. Findings provide evidence that TL is positively related to the firm’s absorptive capacity and that this relationship is m…