CardioExchange Archive

November 3rd, 2010

My Journey with Heart Failure

Mary Knudson, Health Journalist

Well-known science journalist Mary Knudson is the author of HeartSense, a blog about heart failure, from which the following post is taken. In this post, she describes her journey as a heart failure patient from bewildered dismay to self-empowerment; in an upcoming post, she questions the aptness of the designation “heart failure.”   I got to […]

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November 2nd, 2010

Meta-Analysis Provides Little Support for Prophylactic ICD Use in Older Adults

Amy Herman

Prophylactic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapy does not appear to significantly improve survival among older adults with severe left ventricular dysfunction, according to a meta-analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed data from five randomized trials comparing ICD therapy with medical treatment among some 5800 adults with cardiomyopathy. Older adults (defined as 60 and older […]

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November 1st, 2010

AHA Preview: What Is Clyde Yancy Looking Forward to Seeing?

Clyde Yancy, MD

In the first installment of our AHA Preview series, we ask Clyde Yancy, medical director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute and chief of Cardiothoracic Transplantation at Baylor University Medical Center, to list the trials in his field that he is most looking forward to at the AHA Scientific Sessions 2010 meeting.  See what […]

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October 19th, 2010

FDA Advisors Recommend No Changes for Aranesp

Larry Husten, PHD

The FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Advisory Committee has endorsed the status quo for Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa). The committee met on Monday to discuss the Trial to Reduce Cardiovascular Events with Aranesp Therapy (TREAT) and voted 15-1-1 against withdrawal of the indication for chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients not on dialysis. The committee also voted against adoption […]

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October 12th, 2010

Heart Failure and Resource Use at the End of the Road

Larry Husten, PHD

Two studies of heart failure populations — one conducted in the U.S. and one in Canada —  shed light on patterns of resource use in the last 6 months of life. Both studies appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Kathleen Unroe and colleagues retrospectively analyzed resource use in a cohort of nearly 230,000 U.S. Medicare […]

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October 7th, 2010

Rolofylline Fails in Heart-Failure Trial

Larry Husten, PHD

In a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, Massie and colleagues randomized 2033 patients hospitalized with acute heart failure and impaired renal function to receive intravenous roloflylline or placebo. Earlier studies had suggested that the use of an adenosine A1-receptor antagonist might be beneficial in this patient population. There was no difference between the […]

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August 29th, 2010

Downshifting Heart Rate in HF Found Beneficial

Larry Husten, PHD

In the SHIFT trial, Karl Swedberg and colleagues tested the effects of ivabradine, a selective sinus-node inhibitor, in 6558 patients with heart failure who had a heart rate ≥70 bpm. After a median 23 months of follow-up, the rate of cardiovascular death or hospital admission for worsening heart failure was 24% in the ivabradine group […]

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August 24th, 2010

Study Suggests Prognostic Power of Dyspnea in Acute Heart Failure

Larry Husten, PHD

Results of a study with the hormone relaxin suggest that a lack of ongoing dyspnea relief may be an important predictor of outcome. Marco Metra and fellow investigators in the Pre-RELAX-AHF study randomized 232 patients with acute heart failure to placebo or one of 4 doses of relaxin. Only 25% of all patients in the […]

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August 16th, 2010

A Treat for Chocolate Lovers from Sweden

Larry Husten, PHD

In a report that will surely provide comfort to millions, a study of 31,823 Swedish women found that over 9 years of follow-up, women who regularly consumed moderate amounts of chocolate had a lower risk for developing heart failure than those who ate no chocolate at all. However, no protective effect was observed in women […]

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August 10th, 2010

Allopurinol in Gout and Heart Failure

Larry Husten, PHD

Thanassoulis and colleagues analyzed data from 25,000 Canadian heart failure (HF) patients in a paper appearing in Archives of Internal Medicine. They found that patients with a recent or remote history of gout were at high risk for HF readmission or death. Although there was no significant association between allopurinol use in the overall study population, […]

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