0000000000150207
AUTHOR
Ana Ferrer
Impact of Acute Hemoglobin Falls in Heart Failure Patients: A Population Study
Aims: This study assessed the impact of acute hemoglobin (Hb) falls in heart failure (HF) patients. Methods: HF patients with repeated Hb values over time were included. Falls in Hb greater than 30% were considered to represent an acute episode of anemia and the risk of hospitalization and all-cause mortality after the first episode was assessed. Results: In total, 45,437 HF patients (54.9% female, mean age 74.3 years) during a follow-up average of 2.9 years were analyzed. A total of 2892 (6.4%) patients had one episode of Hb falls, 139 (0.3%) had more than one episode, and 342 (0.8%) had concomitant acute kidney injury (AKI). Acute heart failure occurred in 4673 (10.3%) patients, represent…
Circulating Tumor DNA Detection by Digital-Droplet PCR in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: A Systematic Review
Simple Summary Pancreatic cancer is a digestive tumor that is most difficult to treat and carries one of the worst prognoses. The anatomical location of the pancreas makes it very difficult to obtain enough tumor material to establish a molecular diagnosis, so knowing the biology of this tumor and implementing new targeted-therapies is still a pending issue. The use of liquid biopsy, a blood sample test to detect circulating-tumor DNA fragments (ctDNA), is key to overcoming this difficulty and improving the evolution of this tumor. Liquid biopsies are equally representative of the tissue from which they come and allow relevant molecular and diagnostic information to be obtained in a faster …
Detailed Anatomical and Electrophysiological Models of Human Atria and Torso for the Simulation of Atrial Activation
Atrial arrhythmias, and specifically atrial fibrillation (AF), induce rapid and irregular activation patterns that appear on the torso surface as abnormal P-waves in electrocardiograms and body surface potential maps (BSPM). In recent years both P-waves and the BSPM have been used to identify the mechanisms underlying AF, such as localizing ectopic foci or high-frequency rotors. However, the relationship between the activation of the different areas of the atria and the characteristics of the BSPM and P-wave signals are still far from being completely understood. In this work we developed a multi-scale framework, which combines a highly-detailed 3D atrial model and a torso model to study th…
Ventricular Tachycardia and Early Fibrillation in Patients With Brugada Syndrome and Ischemic Cardiomyopathy Show Predictable Frequency-Phase Properties on the Precordial ECG Consistent With the Respective Arrhythmogenic Substrate
[EN] Background¿ Ventricular fibrillation (VF) has been proposed to be maintained by localized high-frequency sources. We tested whether spectral-phase analysis of the precordial ECG enabled identification of periodic activation patterns generated by such sources. Methods and Results¿Precordial ECGs were recorded from 15 ischemic cardiomyopathy and 15 Brugada syndrome (type 1 ECG) patients during induced VF and analyzed in the frequency-phase domain. Despite temporal variability, induced VF episodes lasting 19.6±7.9 s displayed distinctly high power at a common frequency (shared frequency, 5.7±1.1 Hz) in all leads about half of the time. In patients with Brugada syndrome, phase analysis of …
HDAC5 Inhibitors as a Potential Treatment in Breast Cancer Affecting Very Young Women
Background: Breast cancer in very young women (BCVY) defined as <
Airway Responsiveness to Adenosine 5′-Monophosphate and Exhaled Nitric Oxide Measurements
Objectives To investigate the utility of the determination of airway responsiveness to inhaled adenosine 5′-monophosphate (AMP) and exhaled nitric oxide (ENO) levels as markers for safely reducing the dose of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) in patients with asthma well controlled with a moderately high ICS dose. Methods A total of 37 patients with asthma well controlled for at least 3 months by treatment with a moderately high ICS dose (beclomethasone dipropionate, 500 to 1,000 μg or equivalent daily) were included in the study. Patients were treated for a 2-week run-in (baseline) period with their usual dose of ICS. For the next 12 weeks, patients were treated with ICS at half the previous d…