By Enrique Rivero
FINDINGS
UCLA-led research finds that among adult congenital heart disease (CHD) transplant recipients, single-ventricle physiology correlated with higher short-term mortality. But 10-year conditional survival was similar for biventricular and most single-ventricle CHD patients, and notably better for biventricular CHD patients compared to non-CHD heart transplant recipients. Read more from UCLA Health.
By Zulekha Nathoo
A 23-year-old woman in Akron, Ohio, was moved to tears after meeting the family of someone who saved her life.
“Just absolutely amazing and breathtaking, emotional, but also gratifying,” said heart transplant recipient Katherine Herrmann.
Herrmann had undergone 20 surgeries and procedures on her heart before even reaching the age of 20. When she suffered heart failure while still in college, her doctors told her a transplant was the only option to keep her alive. Read the full story in USA Today.
By Regina Schaffer
By Larry R. Jackson II, MD, MHSc
Atrial fibrillation affects 2.7 million to 6.1 million people in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association, and that burden is expected to rise substantially in the coming years.
With AF comes risk for other CV conditions, including a fivefold elevated risk for stroke compared with the general population, yet many people remain undiagnosed and some people are at much higher risk for AF than others. Read the full story in Healio.
Organ donors are some of the most selfless people in the world, so it’s always emotional when someone who received an organ from a donor can meet their family.
That’s what happened when 22-year-old Katherine Herrmann met the family of an organ donor who gave her a new heart. Hermann received her new heart last summer, after having a lifetime of heart problems and 20 surgeries, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Check out the story on Click 2 Houston.com.
By Peter Wehrwein, Managing Editor
The advent of the direct-acting antivirals, such as Harvoni (ledipasvir and sofosbuvir) means people can be treated for HCV infection if they receive a heart from an HCV-viremic donor, according to a recent review paper. The supply of hearts available for transplantation has increased, partly because HCV-viremic individuals are now part of the donor pool.
Transplanting organs, including hearts, from people infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) used to be avoided because of the risk of infection and studies showing that the recipients had worse outcomes,
Marina Nunez, M.D., Ph.D., of Wake Forest School of Medicine, co-wrote a review paper exploring the hepatitis C infection and heart transplantation.
But when the direct-acting antivirals against hepatitis C started to come on the market, particularly Harvoni (ledipasvir and sofosbuvir) in 2014, the views and practices changed. Read more in Managed Healthcare Executive.
By Elise Takahama
It had been less than two weeks since giving birth when a coronary artery in Adriana Rodriguez’s heart burst.
The sudden tear interrupted an early December breakfast with her mother in Bellingham, and within minutes her chest started tightening. A wave of nausea weakened her body. She wanted to curl up into a ball.
Read the full story in The Seattle Times.
By Regina Shaffer
Approximately half of all guidelines published by three major CV societies during the past decade mention “shared decision-making,” yet just 6% of recommendations incorporated shared decision-making in any form, researchers reported.
In a cross-sectional study that assessed 65 CV guidelines published by international CV societies, 51% broadly supported the importance of shared decision-making; however, among 170 recommendations that incorporated the phrase, most “merely noted the importance of patient preferences,” Ricky D. Turgeon, BSc(Pharm), PharmD, ACPR, clinical pharmacy specialist and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, told Healio. Read the full article in Healio.
By Regina Shaffer
CV deaths related to obesity increased by 200% across all race groups from 1999 to 2020, a statistic researchers said reflects the health consequences of the rising burden of obesity in the United States.
In an analysis of more than 280,000 CV deaths in the U.S. with obesity recorded as a contributing cause, researchers also found that Black women had the highest rates of obesity-related CVD deaths than all others, a trend researchers called unexpected. Read the entire article in Healio.
By Elise Takahama
It had been less than two weeks since giving birth when a coronary artery in Adriana Rodriguez’s heart burst.
The sudden tear interrupted an early December breakfast with her mother in Bellingham, and within minutes her chest started tightening. A wave of nausea weakened her body. She wanted to curl up into a ball. Read the full story in The Seattle Times.
By Enrique Rivero
People from socioeconomically distressed communities who underwent heart transplantation between 2004 and 2018 faced a 10% greater relative risk of experiencing graft failure and dying within five years compared to people from non-distressed communities. In addition, following implementation of the 2018 UNOS Heart Allocation policy, transplant recipients between 2018 and 2022 faced an approximately 20% increase in relative risk of dying or experiencing graft failure within three years compared with the pre-policy period. This is despite the fact that the proportion of distressed patients remained the same over both eras. Read more from UCLA Health.