May 9th, 2022 - Clinicians can gain a fuller picture of subclinical atherosclerosis in young people thanks to a new tool that calculates coronary artery calcium (CAC) percentile scores by age, sex, and race. For people ages 30-45 years without known atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), the prevalence of any CAC (CAC >0) was 21%, according to an analysis of nearly 20,000 people who had CAC scanning a...

May 6th, 2022 - Electronic cigarette use had neutral impact on cardiovascular events when used alone, but dual use with conventional tobacco cigarettes wasn't any less risky than only smoking, a study showed. Exclusive use of e-cigarettes was on par with no use for overall risk of developing any cardiovascular disease (adjusted HR 1.00, 95% CI 0.69-1.45) and lower risk than only smoking (aHR 0.66, 95% CI 0.46-...

May 3rd, 2022 - Seven risk factors, some modifiable and some not, accounted for the vast majority of risk for first-time acute myocardial infarction (MI) in young adults, according to a case-control study. The seven factors -- diabetes, depression, hypertension, smoking, family history of premature MI, low household income, and hypercholesterolemia -- were responsible for 83.9% of the total acute MI risk in yo...

May 3rd, 2022 - FDA warns of pump malfunctions in Medtronic's Heartware Ventricular Assist Device, but does not recommend preemptive device removal. Heart transplant recipients had better COVID-19 outcomes if they were vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, one center found. (JAMA Cardiology) Insurance data suggest that half of U.S. patients with established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease were not on statins i...

Apr 29th, 2022 - The FDA approved mavacamten (Camzyos) for the treatment of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in people with New York Heart Association class II-III symptoms -- but on the condition it would only be available through a restricted program. The cardiac myosin inhibitor's label includes a boxed warning that the drug reduces left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and can cause heart f...

Apr 27th, 2022 - The same N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptides (NT-proBNP) concentration could mean drastically different absolute risks of heart failure (HF) for different demographics, according to a cohort study suggesting the importance of sex and race in interpreting risk for people free of HF at baseline. In the longitudinal Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) cohort, Black men, compared with...

Apr 26th, 2022 - Nitrosamines struck again, forcing Pfizer to recall five lots of the antihypertensive medication quinapril HCl (Accupril), according to the FDA. Consistent with draft recommendations released last fall, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force kept the C recommendation to individualize aspirin use in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (and D recommendation warning against aspirin f...

Apr 20th, 2022 - The last U.S. presidential election may have set the stage for an increase in acute cardiovascular hospitalizations in California, a study showed. The number of people ending up in the hospital because of heart attack, heart failure, or stroke in the 5 days after the election reached 760.5 per 100,000 person-years, significantly more than the number during the same 5-day period 2 weeks prior (R...

Apr 19th, 2022 - People with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), taking statins in most cases, were not prone to more dementia in a prospective cohort study from Norway. There was no excess risk of total dementia -- counting vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) -- in FH patients versus matched controls (HR 0.9, 95% CI 0.7-1.2), according to Kjetil Retterstøl, MD, PhD, of the University of Oslo, and co...

Apr 19th, 2022 - People who eat at least two servings of avocado per week have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. (Harvard Heart Letter) Scientists piloted a clinical polygenic risk score assay for diseases ranging from atrial fibrillation (Afib) to breast cancer. (Nature Medicine) Use of low-dose edoxaban (Savaysa) was associated with reduced stroke risk and an insignificant increase in bleeding among old...

Apr 15th, 2022 - It was feasible to perform intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) insertions in the cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) without transferring patients to the catheterization laboratory, according to Italian clinicians. In this single-center study, bedside IABP placement under echocardiographic guidance resulted in correct device positioning at chest X-ray in 82.9% of cases, which was similar to the 82.5...

Apr 12th, 2022 - Motivating patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) and intermittent claudication to start walking at home improved their exercise capacity, the MOSAIC trial showed. Six-minute walk distance improved by 16.7 m more with the physical therapist-led intervention compared with usual care alone at 3 months (from 352.9 m at baseline to 380.6 m vs 369.8 to 372.1 m, P=0.009), reported Lindsay Bear...

Apr 12th, 2022 - Study finds that people with allergies and asthma were more likely to have high blood pressure and coronary heart disease, the American College of Cardiology announced. The American Heart Association reviews the cardiovascular manifestations and complications of COVID-19 in children and young adults. (Circulation) Stroke survivors benefited from modified sitting Tai Chi exercises as part of the...

Apr 11th, 2022 - The case for bariatric surgery's cardiovascular benefits was bolstered by a large nationwide cohort study of older people. Major adverse cardiovascular events were significantly reduced among 94,885 Medicare patients who received surgical treatment for severe obesity compared with matched controls over a median 4 years of follow-up: Bariatric surgery appeared to be protective in this less-studi...

Apr 8th, 2022 - Intravenous corticosteroids didn't hurt people with acute heart failure (HF), and had the potential to pay off in better outcomes for some in a hypothesis-generating study based on Spain's Epidemiology of Acute Heart Failure in the Emergency Departments (EAHFE) registry. Whereas acute HF patients receiving corticosteroid therapy in the emergency department (ED) saw no improvement in all-cause m...

Apr 5th, 2022 - The more cholesterol and eggs consumed, the more overall and cardiovascular deaths in an updated meta-analysis. (Circulation) In PACMAN-AMI, heart attack survivors saw better coronary plaque regression when started early on alirocumab (Praluent) therapy atop statins. (JAMA) Between 2020 and 2021, ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients with COVID-19 died less frequently in-hospital,...

Mar 30th, 2022 - Operators continued to make progress on an investigational septal reduction procedure for drug-refractory obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) at the Chinese center that pioneered the technique. Among 200 patients, the 30-day major adverse clinical event rate was 10.5% with percutaneous intramyocardial septal radiofrequency ablation (PIMSRA), with the bulk of events related to pericard...

Mar 29th, 2022 - Cardiologist John Spertus, MD, developer of the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire, sued EHR giant Epic Systems for copyright infringement related to his diagnostic tests. (Becker's Hospital Review) Here's how to improve recruitment of underrepresented racial groups to heart failure trials. (JAMA Cardiology) Carmat says it is restarting production of its Aeson total artificial heart follo...

Mar 22nd, 2022 - Blood pressure hyperreactivity upon standing among young people predicted greater risk for major adverse cardiovascular and renal events. (Hypertension) High triglycerides flag an excess risk of recurrent atherothrombotic stroke, statin use notwithstanding, registry data showed. (Neurology) Boys with hypospadias were prone to more cardiovascular disease in adulthood, a small Scottish study foun...

Mar 22nd, 2022 - Researchers found a potentially treatable risk factor for dementia in atrial myopathy, according to an exploratory analysis of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. Significant associations were revealed between ARIC participants in their 70s and 80s and several echocardiographic measures of left atrial (LA) function and dementia. Over a median follow-up of 6 years, dementia rat...