CardioExchange Archive

CardioExchange is pleased to reprint selections from Dr. Richard Lehman’s weekly journal review blog at BMJ.com. Selected summaries are relevant to our audience, but we encourage members to engage with the entire blog. 

Week of April 30th

JAMA  25 Apr 2012  Vol 307

Another Negative Stem Cell Study in HF (pg. 1717): Any budding young cardiology academic wishing to set up a publication of her own could do worse than start a Journal of Negative Stem Cell Trials in Heart Failure. There are enough of these to fill a volume every quarter-year or so, and editorials could reflect on all sorts of fascinating issues to do with how to wash bone-marrow cells, whether to pre-treat them with this or that, which bit of myocardium to put them in, whether tiny differences in this or that functional measure in various aggregated subgroups indicated that this treatment might actually work one day, etc, etc. This would save the rest of us from having the disappointment of bumping into these papers on a regular basis in the main medical journals. Ten years ago, they were really exciting, and we all took heart, so to speak; but the FOCUS-CCTRN published here is just another failure like the rest. The cells were autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells; they were introduced by transendocardial injection, mostly into male hearts damaged by ischaemia, and at six months there was no evidence that they were doing anything to any of 8 outcome measures.

Endocarditis and ICDs (pg.1727): About 6% of infective endocarditis is associated with implantable cardiac devices, and the vast majority of the culprits are pacemaker batteries. So although the wires are in the heart, the germs are on the subcutaneous box and reach the heart valves through the bloodstream. The treatment is to get the device out as soon as possible: these infections carry a substantial mortality which increases with delay in removal.

Lancet  28 Apr 2012  Vol 379

Kawasaki disease is every doctor’s and parent’s nightmare (pg.1613): cause unknown, so rare that most doctors never see a case, thus easily missed, and potentially fatal due to coronary arteritis. There are about 40 cases a year in the UK, but this Japanese trial managed to collect 298 children with severe Kawasaki’s and randomize them to receive intravenous immunoglobulin with or without prednisolone. The steroid-treated group were left with fewer coronary artery abnormalities.

Arch Intern Med  23 Apr 2012  Vol 172

Another Stent Wars Sequel (pg. 611): Most of my generalist readers are probably ready to pelt me with rotten eggs when I bring them another paper about stents, but I can’t help telling you about this individual patient data meta-analysis of drug-eluting vs bare-metal stents for primary angioplasty because it’s probably quite important. No, hold the ripe tomatoes too. All I’ll do is give you the conclusion:

Among patients with STEMI undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention, sirolimus-eluting and paclitaxel-eluting stents compared with BMS are associated with a significant reduction in target-vessel revascularization at long-term follow-up. Although there were no differences in cumulative mortality, reinfarction, or stent thrombosis, the incidence of very late reinfarction and stent thrombosis was increased with these DES.

Yes, read that again. To me that seems to say that these vastly more expensive stents, which also need a year of costly clopidogrel treatment afterwards, don’t actually perform any better than bare metal stents for most patient-important outcomes, and any possible advantages seem to be balanced by disadvantages. Or have I missed something?

Stroke Prevention in A-Fib (pg. 623): Another meta-analysis, this time of trials of warfarin to prevent stroke in people with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. What’s the biggest breakthrough here? Why, it’s making sure people are in the INR target range. Because if they are, they have fewer strokes and fewer bleeds. Medicine is sometimes, though sadly not often, perfectly logical.