The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought unprecedented changes to our world and health-care system. Its high virulence and infectiousness directly infect people's respiratory ...system and indirectly disrupt our health-care infrastructure. In particular, ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is a clinical emergency emphasizes on the establishment of care system to minimize delay to reperfusion. As such, the impact of COVID-19 on STEMI care, ranging from disease severity, patient delay, diagnostic difficulty, triage to selection of reperfusion strategy and postoperative care, is immense. Importantly, not only we have to save our patients, but we must also need to protect all health-care workers and prevent environmental contamination. Otherwise, in-hospital transmission can quickly evolve into nosocomial outbreak with staff infection and quarantine which lead to health-care system collapse. In this article, we will discuss the challenges in various aspects of STEMI management during COVID-19, as well as the mitigation measures we can take to optimize outcome and our future.
Aortic stenosis (AS) is a prevalent disease affecting 3.7% of the adult population aged 65 or above. In the past, surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) was the only definitive therapy available ...for the treatment of severe AS. Owing to the invasive nature of open-heart surgery, patients with advanced age and frailty could not benefit from SAVR. The advent of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in the past decade has offered an alternative treatment option for patients with severe AS, particularly those who are deemed to have high surgical risks. Nevertheless, a large proportion of patients also have concomitant peripheral arterial disease (PAD), which increases the risk of peri-procedural vascular complication, and precludes the possibility of transfemoral TAVR owing to inadequate luminal size for delivery system deployment. In this review, the prevalence and outcome of TAVR patients with PAD will be discussed. Furthermore, novel technologies and techniques that enable TAVR to be safely performed using transfemoral or alternative access in patients with severe PAD will be reviewed.
Current international guidelines recommend non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs) for stroke prevention among patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF) at significant ischaemic stroke ...risk given the superior safety and comparable efficacy of NOACs over warfarin. Nonetheless, the safety and effectiveness of NOACs have not been evaluated in patients with AF with underlying moderate or severe mitral stenosis (MS), hence the recommended stroke prevention strategy remains warfarin therapy.
MS remains disproportionately prevalent in Asian countries compared with the developed countries. This prospective, randomised, open-label trial with blinded endpoint adjudication aims to evaluate the safety and efficacy of dabigatran for stroke prevention in AF patients with moderate or severe MS. Patients with AF aged ≥18 years with moderate or severe MS not planned for valvular intervention in the coming 12 months will be randomised in a 1:1 ratio to receive dabigatran 110 mg or 150 mg two times per day or warfarin with international normalised ratio 2-3 in an open-label design. Patients with estimated creatinine clearance <30 mL/min, or with a concomitant indication for antiplatelet therapy will be excluded. The primary outcome is a composite of stroke and systemic embolism. Secondary outcomes are ischaemic stroke, systemic embolism, haemorrhagic stroke, intracranial haemorrhage, major bleeding and death. The estimated required sample size is approximately 686 participants.
The study protocol has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong West Cluster, Hospital Authority, Hong Kong for Fung Yiu King Hospital, Grantham Hospital, Queen Mary Hospital and Tung Wah Hospital in Hong Kong. Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals.
ClinicalTrials.gov Registry (NCT04045093); pre-results.
SARS-Cov-2 has been suggested to promote thrombotic complications and higher mortality. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of SARS-CoV-2 positivity on in-hospital outcome and ...30-day mortality in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) enrolled in the International Survey on Acute Coronary Syndromes ST-segment elevation Myocardial Infarction (ISACS-STEMI COVID-19 registry. The 109 SARS-CoV-2 positive patients were compared with 2005 SARS-CoV-2 negative patients. Positive patients were older (P = .002), less often active smokers (P = .002), and hypercholesterolemic (P = .006), they presented more often later than 12 h (P = .037), more often to the hub and were more often in cardiogenic shock (P = .02), or requiring rescue percutaneous coronary intervention after failed thrombolysis (P < .0001). Lower postprocedural Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction 3 flow (P = .029) and more thrombectomy (P = .046) were observed. SARS-CoV-2 was associated with a significantly higher in-hospital mortality (25.7 vs 7%, adjusted Odds Ratio (OR) 95% Confidence Interval = 3.2 1.71-5.99, P < .001) in-hospital definite in-stent thrombosis (6.4 vs 1.1%, adjusted Odds Ratio 95% CI = 6.26 2.41-16.25, P < .001) and 30-day mortality (34.4 vs 8.5%, adjusted Hazard Ratio 95% CI = 2.16 1.45-3.23, P < .001), confirming that SARS-CoV-2 positivity is associated with impaired reperfusion, with negative prognostic consequences.
Calcified disease increases procedural challenges and is associated with worse outcomes in percutaneous coronary intervention. Coronary intravascular lithotripsy is a new balloon-based modality for ...treating calcified disease with deep circumferential calcification. Its main benefit is simplicity and safety compared to atherectomy. However, atherectomy remains the modality of choice in balloon-uncrossable lesions. More than one modality is often needed for treatment of calcified disease. The authors present a case of a balloon-uncrossable calcified ostial left circumflex lesion which was first treated with rotational atherectomy. However, there was haematoma formation in the ostial circumflex extending into left main coronary artery, together with suboptimal preparation of calcified disease. Intravascular coronary lithotripsy was then used to successfully prepare the calcified lesion for stenting without causing extension of the haematoma.
Background: Patients who survive myocardial infarction (MI) are at risk of recurrent cardiovascular (CV) events. This study stratified post-MI patients for risk of recurrent CV events using the ...Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Risk Score for Secondary Prevention (TRS 2°P). Methods and Results: This was an observational study that applied TRS 2°P to a consecutive cohort of post-MI patients. The primary outcome was a composite endpoint of CV death, non-fatal MI, and non-fatal ischemic stroke. A total of 1,688 post-MI patients (70.3±13.6 years; male, 63.1%) were enrolled. After a mean follow-up of 41.5±34.4 months, 405 patients (24.0%) had developed a primary outcome (9.3%/year) consisting of 278 CV deaths, 134 non-fatal MI, and 33 non-fatal strokes. TRS 2°P was strongly associated with the primary outcome. The annual incidence of primary composite endpoint for patients with TRS 2°P 0 was 1.0%, and increased progressively to 39.9% for those with TRS 2°P ≥6 (HR, 27.6; 95% CI: 9.87–77.39, P<0.001). The diagnostic sensitivity of TRS 2°P for the primary composite endpoint was 76.3% (95% CI: 72.1–80.5%). Similar associations were also observed between TRS 2°P and CV death and non-fatal MI, but not non-fatal ischemic stroke. Conclusions: TRS 2°P reliably stratified post-MI patients for risk of future CV events.
PDF
