CardioExchange Archive

HF Readmission: See Me Now Or See Me Later: After being hospitalized for heart failure (HF), patients who are treated at hospitals with higher rates of early follow-up have lower rates of readmission at 30 days, according to a new study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Adrian Hernandez and colleagues analyzed data from 30,136 patients with HF. They write that “early evaluation after discharge is critical. This evaluation should include a review of therapeutic changes and a thorough assessment of the patient’s clinical status outside of the highly structured hospital setting.”


No Reduction in MI Following Pneumococcal Vaccination: In a large cohort of men 45 years or older, the pneumococcal vaccine did not appear to have any effect on the risk of acute MI or stroke. In their paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Hung Fu Tseng and colleagues note that although several studies have shown that influenza vaccination reduces the risk of cardiovascular events, the evidence is less certain for the pneumococcal vaccination. In an accompanying editorial, Mohammad Madjid and Daniel Musher point out the limitations of observational studies and write that “until rigorous data from clinical trials are available to determine whether pneumonia vaccine can prevent MI, physicians should strictly adhere to available guidelines for optimizing vaccination rates in recommended target groups, because these rates are still far from optimal.”