Acute kidney injury (AKI) is relatively common after cardiothoracic surgery for type A acute aortic dissection (TA-AAD) and increases mortality. We investigated the incidence and risk factors for AKI ...in patients with TA-AAD and its impact on their outcomes. The records of 375 consecutive patients who underwent surgical treatment for TA-AAD from October 2007 to March 2013 were analyzed retrospectively. We defined AKI using the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes criteria, which are based on serum creatinine concentration or glomerular filtration rate. We used Kaplan-Meier methods and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression to assess the impact of AKI on both mortality and major adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. We also examined the association between risk factors and AKI using logistic regression modeling. Postoperative AKI was observed in 165 patients (44.0%). The overall 30-day and mid- to long-term mortality was 1.6% and 8.8%, respectively. Mortality and major adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events correlated significantly with the severity of AKI, and multivariate analysis showed that AKI stage 3 (the most sever stage) was an independent risk factor for mortality (hazard ratio 6.83, 95% confidence interval 2.52 to 18.52) after adjustment for important confounding factors. Extracorporeal circulation time, body mass index, perioperative peak serum C-reactive protein concentration, renal malperfusion, and perioperative sepsis were found to be risk factors for AKI. In conclusion, AKI was common in patients who underwent surgery for type A acute aortic dissection. The severity of AKI strongly influences patient outcomes, so it should be recognized promptly and treated aggressively when possible.
Abstract Background Coronary risk factors for the onset of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), including polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), in younger adult patients may be different from those in older ...patients. Methods and results We enrolled 578 patients who underwent coronary angiography at Fukuoka Saiseikai Hospital, and divided them into a younger adult group (YG) (<50 years, n = 47) and a middle-aged older group (OG) (≥50 years, n = 531). In a multivariate analysis, lower levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and the ratio of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) to arachidonic acid (AA) (EPA/AA), and less aspirin, oral hypoglycemic agent, and calcium channel blocker (CCB) use were independent risk factors for ACS in all patients. In YG, lower levels of EPA/AA and less angiotensin II receptor blocker/angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor use were the independent risk factors. In OG, smoking, lower levels of EPA/AA, less aspirin and CCB use were the risk factors. While lower levels of EPA/AA was the only risk factor for ACS that was common to all patients, YG and OG, docosahexaenoic acid/AA was not associated with ACS in YG and OG. Conclusions Lower level of EPA/AA is a common critical risk factor for ACS in middle-aged older patients as well as younger adult patients. Some of the risk factors for the onset of ACS in younger patients were different from those in older patients.
Abstract We present a case of prosthetic valve endocarditis, which was caused by a rare etiological agent, Streptococcus constellatus . In our case, transesophageal echocardiography showed a large ...and broad abscess formation throughout the patient's aortic prosthetic valve ring and left atrium. Despite specific intravenous antibiotic therapy, the infection was uncontrollable, and the patient underwent surgical treatment. The pathogen rarely causes endocarditis, but it is known to have a strong potential to form abscess, and therefore its infection may be more serious than other Streptococcus species. Our case seems to be the first report of surgical treatment of PVE caused by S. constellatus . As in our case, transesophageal echocardiography is useful for the detection of vegetation and abscess, and early cardiac surgery may be a more appropriate therapeutic approach for endocarditis caused by S. constellatus.
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•Patients with dilated cardiomyopathy who achieved LVRR have a favorable prognosis, but it is still difficult to precisely predict LVRR in the clinical setting.•Immunostaining of DNA ...damage markers such as PAR in biopsy specimens from patients with dilated cardiomyopathy revealed that patients with LVRR showed a significantly smaller proportion of PAR-positive nuclei compared with those without LVRR.•The high proportion of PAR-positive nuclei was an independent prognostic factor for LVRR. Besides, it can predict clinical prognosis (death, heart transplantation, and ventricular assist device implantation) with good sensitivity and specificity.
This study evaluated myocardial nuclear staining for the DNA damage markers poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) and γ-H2A.X in 58 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. Patients with left ventricular reverse remodeling (LVRR) showed a significantly smaller proportion of PAR-positive nuclei and γ-H2A.X–positive nuclei in biopsy specimens compared with those without LVRR. Propensity analysis showed that the proportion of both PAR-positive and γ-H2A.X–positive nuclei were independent prognostic factors for LVRR. In conclusion, we showed the utility of DNA damage-marker staining to predict the probability of LVRR, thus revealing a novel prognostic predictor of medical therapy for dilated cardiomyopathy.
The integration of multiple omics data promises to reveal new insights into the pathogenic mechanisms of complex human diseases, with the potential to identify avenues for the development of targeted ...therapies for disease subtypes. However, the extraction of diagnostic/disease-specific biomarkers from multiple omics data with biological pathway knowledge is a challenging issue in precision medicine. In this paper, we present a novel computational method to identify diagnosis-specific trans-omic biomarkers from multiple omics data. In the algorithm, we integrated multi-class sparse canonical correlation analysis (MSCCA) and molecular pathway analysis in order to derive discriminative molecular features that are correlated across different omics layers. We applied our proposed method to analyzing proteome and metabolome data of heart failure (HF), and extracted trans-omic biomarkers for HF subtypes; specifically, ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM) and dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). We were able to detect not only individual proteins that were previously reported from single-omics studies but also correlated protein–metabolite pairs characteristic of HF disease subtypes. For example, we identified hexokinase1(HK1)–d-fructose-6-phosphate as a paired trans-omic biomarker for DCM, which could significantly perturb amino-sugar metabolism. Our proposed method is expected to be useful for various applications in precision medicine.