Podcasts about intraoperatively

This case report explores the intricacies of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), delving into its genetic basis, atherosclerotic cascade, and early-onset cardiovascular complications. It examines established diagnostic criteria and emphasizes personalized management, including statins, novel therapies, and lifestyle modifications. CardioNerds cofounders (Drs. Amit Goyal and Danial Ambinder) join Dr. Irfan Shafi, Dr. Preeya Prakash, and Dr. Rebecca Theisen from the Wayne State University/DMC and Central Michigan University at Campus Martius in Downtown Detroit for some holiday ice-skating! They discuss an interesting pediatric case (see case synopsis below). Dr. Luis C Afonso provides the Expert CardioNerd Perspectives & Review segment for this episode. Audio editing by CardioNerds academy intern, Pace Wetstein. US Cardiology Review is now the official journal of CardioNerds! Submit your manuscript here. CardioNerds Case Reports PageCardioNerds Episode PageCardioNerds AcademyCardionerds Healy Honor Roll CardioNerds Journal ClubSubscribe to The Heartbeat Newsletter!Check out CardioNerds SWAG!Become a CardioNerds Patron! Case Synopsis FH, a 9-year-old female with no previous medical history, recently moved back to the US from Iraq. She presented to establish care and discuss new-onset chest pain and dyspnea. A systolic ejection murmur was noted during her initial visit to the pediatrician, prompting cholesterol testing and a cardiology referral. Testing revealed, alarming cholesterol levels (Total Cholesterol: 802 mg/dL, LDL: 731 mg/dL, Triglycerides: 123 mg/dL) prompted concern for cardiac involvement. Due to persistent symptoms, FH was transferred to Children's Hospital of Michigan. Despite normal findings on EKG and chest x-ray, a 2/6 systolic murmur was noted. She was discharged with a cardiology clinic follow-up. However, two days later, FH experienced severe chest pain at rest, sweating, and difficulty breathing. She was transported to Children's Hospital again, and her troponin level measured 3000, and her total cholesterol was 695 mg/dL. An echocardiogram revealed valvar and supravalvar aortic stenosis, necessitating collaboration between Pediatric and Adult cardiology teams. CTA thorax revealed severe supravalvular stenosis, a hypoplastic right coronary artery, and significant coronary artery obstructions. Diagnostic cardiac catheterization confirmed severe aortic stenosis and coronary artery disease, leading to the decision for surgical intervention. FH underwent the Ross operation, left main coronary artery augmentation, and right coronary artery reimplantation. Intraoperatively, atherosclerotic plaques were observed in multiple cardiac structures. FH's recovery was uneventful, discharged on a regimen including Atorvastatin, Ezetimibe, evolocumab, and antiplatelet therapy. Persistent high LDL levels required regular plasmapheresis. Plans for evaluations in Genetics, Lipid Clinic, Endocrine, and Gastroenterology were made, potentially leading to a liver transplant assessment. Given the severity of her condition, a heart/liver transplant might be considered in the future. Conclusion: This case of FH highlights the complex presentation of severe aortic stenosis and coronary artery disease in a pediatric patient. Urgent diagnosis, interdisciplinary collaboration, and aggressive management were crucial. The case underscores the importance of comprehensive care for pediatric patients with rare cardiac conditions, emphasizing collaboration between specialties for optimal outcomes and long-term well-being. Case Media Pearls - Familial Hypercholesterolemia Mutations in LDLR, ApoB, or PCSK9 genes disrupt LDL-C clearance, leading to a cascade of events culminating in accelerated atherosclerosis and early-onset cardiovascular complications (e.g., CAD, aortic stenosis, PAD, stroke). Diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolemia relies on ...

On Episode 18 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the July 2022 issue of Stroke: “Impact of Shunting Practice Patterns During Carotid Endarterectomy for Symptomatic Carotid Stenosis” and “Socioeconomic Inequalities in Reperfusion Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke.” She also interviews Dr. Magdy Selim about his article “Effect of Deferoxamine on Trajectory of Recovery After Intracerebral Hemorrhage: A Post Hoc Analysis of the i-DEF Trial.” Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Let's start with some questions. 1) Is deferoxamine mesylate yet another failed agent for treatment of patients with intracerebral hemorrhage, or is deferoxamine getting us closer than ever to an approved therapy for this deadly form of stroke? 2) Are different strokes happening to different folks due to their disadvantaged socioeconomic status? 3) And finally, how does a surgeon's personal practice preference to either routinely or selectively use carotid shunting during carotid endarterectomy impact the recurrent risk of stroke or death in patients with symptomatic carotid disease? We'll tackle these questions and a lot more in today's podcast as we continue to cover the cerebrovascular world's latest and greatest because, without a doubt, this is the best in Stroke. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Welcome back to the July issue of the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. The July 2022 issue of Stroke contains a range of really interesting papers that I'd like to highlight here. As part of our Cochrane Corner articles, giving us short summaries of the long systematic review of a given topic, we have two short articles, one on the issue of local versus general anesthesia for carotid endarterectomy, where we learn that based on the current evidence, there's no convincing difference between local versus general anesthesia in the risk of stroke and death within 30 days after the procedure. In the second Cochrane Corner article, titled "Information Provision for Stroke Survivors and Their Carers," we learn that stroke survivors and their caregivers routinely report dissatisfaction with information provided to them by their clinicians about their condition and how active approaches to information provision is superior to its passive forms in improving patients' involvement in their care, their satisfaction, and, ultimately and not surprisingly, their stroke outcome. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         As part of our original contributions in this issue of the journal, we have an important paper titled "The Risk of Early Versus Later Rebleeding From Dural AV Fistulas With Cortical Venous Drainage." We are reminded in this paper that cranial dural arteriovenous fistulas are classified based on their venous drainage into those with or those without cortical venous drainage, or CVD. Dural AV fistulas without CVD rarely cause intracranial bleeding, while those with CVD may cause hemorrhage. In this study, the authors show that the risk of rebleeding of dural AV fistulas with CVD presenting with hemorrhage is increased in the first two weeks after ICH, emphasizing the importance of early detection of these malformations by vascular imaging and early treatment of AV fistulas with cortical drainage. This paper is another analysis from the CONDOR registry. Our devoted Stroke Alert listeners recall that we covered this registry in more detail when we interviewed Dr. Amin-Hanjani last October on the outcomes of intracerebral hemorrhage patients found to have dural AV fistulas. I encourage you to review these articles in addition to listening to our podcast today. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Later in the podcast, I have the distinct honor of interviewing Dr. Magdy Selim from Harvard Medical School on a critical analysis from i-DEF trial to examine the long-term outcome of patients with ICH who were randomized to receive deferoxamine versus placebo. As an expert in the field of intracerebral hemorrhage and a member of the recently published American Heart Association Guidelines Committee, Dr. Selim was not fazed at all about the neutral results of the trial. "The future of ICH is bright," he says, and in the interview, he tells us why. But first, with these two articles. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Since its first reported successful surgery in 1953, carotid endarterectomy, or CEA, has become a common surgical procedure to prevent ischemic stroke in patients with carotid disease. CEA requires a temporary clamping of the carotid artery that is being worked on. During this time, the ipsilateral hemisphere is, of course, dependent on collateral flow from the posterior circulation or from the contralateral anterior circulation to maintain its perfusion pressure. Intraoperatively, various methods are used to monitor cerebral perfusion, and the risk of clamping-induced hypoperfusion is obviously variable for each patient depending on the patient's specific anatomy, their collateral status, and other risk factors. One way to protect the brain against possible clamp-induced ischemia is to do carotid shunting. The problem is that carotid shunting also comes with its own set of risks and problems. There's the risk of causing carotid dissection, embolization of pieces of the plaque during shunt insertion, or the risk of causing air embolism. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         There are also other shunt-related local complications that should be noted, such as possibility of causing injuries to the cranial nerves or development of neck hematoma related to the more extensive surgical exposure required for shunting. So, it's not surprising that the practice patterns with regards to shunting is quite variable amongst different surgeons. There are surgeons that are considered routine shunters, and those who are considered selective shunters, meaning that the shunt is inserted only in cases with a particular indication. The question is whether the surgeon's preference for shunting can impact the CEA outcomes. In the current issue of the journal, we have an interesting study led by Dr. Randall DeMartino from the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, where the authors look at the impact of shunting practice patterns during carotid endarterectomy on the following post-CEA outcomes: number one, in-hospital stroke and in-hospital death rates, and number two, combined stroke and death in patients with a recent symptomatic carotid disease, that is, carotid stenosis associated with a history of either ipsilateral stroke or TIA within the past 14 days of endarterectomy. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, the data for the study came from the ongoing Vascular Quality Initiative database, which comprises a network of more than 600 North American academic and community hospitals, and collects data on 12 different vascular procedures, one of which is CEA. The study included over 13,000 carotid endarterectomies performed from 2010 to 2019 for symptomatic carotid patients. This number came after they applied their exclusion criteria to all CEAs performed in the database during this timeframe, importantly excluding any asymptomatic carotid surgeries or those in whom surgery was performed after the two-week mark post qualifying TIA or stroke. Now, before we go over the results, let's go over some definitions used in the study. They had to classify surgeons to be able to do the study into two categories of routine versus selective shunters. So, what they did was to analyze all consecutive CEAs, whether they were done on symptomatic or asymptomatic carotids, in this database, aggregated at the surgeon level. Surgeons routinely shunting in over 95% of their procedures were gauged as routine shunters. Otherwise, they were classified as selective shunters. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Now, coming to each case included in this study, each surgical case was, in turn, classified into four categories based on whether or not a shunt was actually used for that particular case: category one, no shunt used; category two, shunt used as a routine procedure; number three, shunt used for a preoperative, mostly anatomical indication; number four, shunt was used for an intraoperative indication, which, as we mentioned before, these are mostly intraoperative hemodynamic compromised situations. And here are the results: In total, 3,186 of surgeries, that is 24% of surgeries, were performed by routine shunters versus 76% by selective shunters. So, most surgeons were selective shunters in this study. The demographic of patients operated by the routine versus selective shunters were more or less similar with regards to the age of the patients, most of their vascular risk factors, and the degree of ipsilateral or contralateral carotid stenosis or occlusion, with a few notable exceptions, in that patients undergoing surgery by routine shunters were more likely White, more likely to have had a prior CABG, more likely to undergo the operation while taking a P2Y12 inhibitor antiplatelet agent, and these patients were more likely to have had a TIA rather than a stroke as their qualifying event, which probably explains why they were more likely to be operated on within 48 hours of symptom onset as well. So, the authors accounted for these differences when they did their multivariate analysis. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         The other thing to note was that overall, routine shunters used a shunt in 98.1% of their cases, whereas selective shunters used them in 46% of their cases. Now, in terms of their study outcomes, the shunting practice pattern did not impact the primary outcomes of in-hospital stroke or death, or a combination of these two outcomes, or even the odds of development of cranial nerve injuries or hemorrhage in the adjusted model, which is really good news here. But interestingly, in the final adjusted model, whether or not an actual shunt was placed during surgery did significantly increase the risk of postoperative stroke, with the odds ratio of 1.29, an effect that was entirely driven by the use of shunt by a surgeon classified as a selective shunter in this study. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, in simple terms, if a shunt was placed during CEA, it did increase the risk of stroke only if that surgeon was a selective shunter. Another interesting association was that amongst selective shunters, placing a shunt for a patient with a very recent ischemic event, that is, TIA or stroke within the past 48 hours prior to surgery, and placing a shunt for an intraoperative indication, meaning shunt placement was not pre-surgically planned, also significantly increased the risk of postoperative stroke. So, what we learned from the study is that, though a surgeon's shunting practice pattern did not have an impact on the overall postoperative risk of stroke or death, the placement of a shunt did indeed increase the risk of postoperative stroke only if it was placed by a surgeon who is a selective shunter, especially for an intraoperative indication in a patient with a recent ischemic event. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, shunts can be tricky, especially if they're done by a surgeon who doesn't place them routinely. So, my take-home message is that ultimately, like every other procedure in medicine, clinical outcomes are as much operator dependent as they are patient dependent, and for every procedure, it's fair to say that practice makes perfect. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         It is now more than 25 years since intravenous thrombolytic therapy has been approved for treatment of patients with acute ischemic stroke and more than seven years since randomized control trials demonstrated the efficacy of mechanical thrombectomy to improve clinical outcome in ischemic stroke patients with large vessel occlusions. To date, reperfusion therapies are the only available acute treatments for select patients with ischemic stroke. What do we mean by "select"? "Select" meaning that not all patients will benefit from these therapies, making it absolutely necessary for clinicians to be up to date with various indications and contraindications to use these therapies. Needless to say that the criteria for reperfusion therapies do not and should not consider the socioeconomic status of patients, but sadly, socioeconomic inequalities seem to impact the use of reperfusion therapies. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         In this issue of the journal, in the study titled "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Reperfusion Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke," Dr. Øgendahl Buus from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark and colleagues studied the impact of the socioeconomic status of stroke patients on the odds of receiving reperfusion therapies in the large nationwide Danish Stroke Registry, or DSR. Now a bit about the registry: DSR contains prospectively collected nationwide data on all stroke patients admitted to Danish hospitals. It's interesting to note that in Denmark, stroke patients are exclusively admitted to public hospitals, and all departments treating stroke patients are obligated to report data to DSR. Now, for this study, they included over 63,000 stroke patients from 2013 to 2018. After excluding hemorrhagic stroke, TIAs, and other exclusion criteria of the study, they arrived at their sample size of 37,187 patients that were included in this study. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Now, a few definitions. The socioeconomic status of each patient was determined based on three parameters. Parameter number one, their educational level. It was categorized into three levels of low, medium, or high levels of education. Category number two, income level. This was calculated based on the average family equivalent disposable income, or FED income, during five years prior to stroke onset, again classified into three categories of high, medium, or low income. And the third factor was the employment status of the patient during the calendar year prior to the stroke onset, also categorized into three categories of employed, unemployed, and retired. And, of course, the authors used various definitions to be able to fit special situations into these categories. For instance, a person who is temporarily unemployed due to illness or other special situation was still categorized under the employed category. So, that gave them, in total, nine groups to analyze across these three categories. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         And here are their findings. The median age of total stroke patients in the cohort was 73.2 years, 44.1% were women, 41% categorized under low educational level, 68% retired, and 33.3% had low income levels. Not surprisingly, patients and hospital characteristics varied tremendously across these nine groups of education, employment, and income, and a univariate analysis in general, low socioeconomic status was associated with more severe strokes, living alone, living at an assisted living residency, having had prior stroke, high comorbidity index score, hypertension, and late hospital arrival. So, they accounted for these differences in their multivariate analysis. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Now, overall, the treatment rates of IV thrombolysis was 17.6%, which is actually considered a very high percentage as compared to other registry-based studies, but the percentage of IV thrombolytic use dramatically varied based on the different socioeconomic designation. So, let's look at this. In the univariate analysis, for education, intravenous thrombolysis rates were 19.3% among patients with high educational level compared to 16.2% among patients with low educational level. Let's look at income. For income, IV thrombolytic treatment rates reach 20.7% for high-income patients compared to 14.8% for low-income patients. For employment status, thrombolytic rates were 23.7% among employed patients compared to 15.7% for unemployed patients. In their fully adjusted models, unemployed patients were less likely to receive IV lytics as compared to their employed counterparts. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Now, for thrombectomy, socioeconomic gradients were also noted for these three categories. For education, thrombectomy rates were 4.5% among patients with high education level compared to 3.6% among patients with low educational level. For income, treatment rates were 3.2% among low-income patients compared to 4.7% among high-income patients. But arguably, the most robust differences were noted again across the category of employment. Employed patients were nearly twice more likely to receive thrombectomy as compared to unemployed patients, rates being 5.1% versus 2.8%, respectively. Now, when they adjusted their analysis to only those patients presenting within the reperfusion time windows in the fully adjusted models, unemployment and low income remain significant negative predictors of receiving both of these reperfusion therapies. So, what we learned from this study is that stroke patients who were unemployed, earned a relatively low income, or had fewer years of formal education were less likely to receive life-saving reperfusion therapies despite potentially being eligible for these treatments. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Now, let's take a moment to really understand that data presented here are in the context of a tax-funded, universal healthcare offered across Denmark, where we can at least make the assumption that financial constraints potentially preventing access to therapies are likely minimized. There are many countries around the globe where patients or family members have to pay for these therapies before even receiving them. So, these findings from the current study from Denmark are alarming in that they point to possibly more robust inequalities across the globe in other healthcare systems. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Intracerebral hemorrhage, or ICH, is an aggressive form of stroke, typically carrying a higher morbidity and mortality than its ischemic counterpart. Yet much of the research in the field of intracerebral hemorrhage has followed the ischemic stroke footsteps, including defining the optimal primary outcome for the randomized trials of ICH. For ischemic stroke, the 90-day functional outcome, as measured by the modified Rankin Scale, is commonly used as a primary outcome in clinical trials. There are many reasons for this selection, including the ease of use and the fact that the majority of functional recovery post-ischemic stroke occurs during the first 90-day time period. But time to maximum recovery and, importantly, the trajectory of recovery may be different in hemorrhagic as compared to ischemic stroke. Defining the long-term outcomes and longitudinal trajectory of recovery in ICH is, therefore, important to better understand its prognosis and, of course, selecting the appropriate primary outcome measure for future randomized trials of ICH. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         In the recent years, the safety and efficacy of various agents to improve ICH outcomes have been tested. Deferoxamine mesylate, an iron-chelating agent, is one such agent that was recently studied as part of the i-DEF multicenter randomized trial, and the main results of the study were published in Lancet Neurology in 2019. In the current issue of the journal, in the study titled "Effect of Deferoxamine on Trajectory of Recovery After Intracerebral Hemorrhage," we learn about the results of a post hoc analysis of i-DEF that looks at the trajectory of functional outcome in patients enrolled in the trial with a special attention on their continued recovery after the 90-day post-ICH mark. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Joining me now is the senior author of this paper, Dr. Magdy Selim, who's also one of the primary investigators of i-DEF trial. Dr. Selim is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Stroke Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He's a world renowned researcher in the field of cerebrovascular disorders with special focus on treatment of patients with intracerebral hemorrhage. Dr. Selim has led and currently leads multiple National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trials of intracerebral hemorrhage, including the ongoing SATURN trial. I'm delighted to welcome him to our podcast today. Good afternoon, Magdy. Thank you for joining us today. Dr. Magdy Selim:             Thank you, Dr. Asdaghi. It's really my pleasure to be here with you, and I'm certainly honored to do this today. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         That's great. Thank you. So, let's start with some background on deferoxamine and the literature supporting the use of deferoxamine before i-DEF. Dr. Magdy Selim:             So, as you mentioned, deferoxamine is an iron chelator; it binds to iron and removes excess iron from the body. The unique thing about it is that it has other neuroprotective properties, which are good for hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke. It also has anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects. It even lowers the blood pressure, which we know sometimes is helpful in intracerebral hemorrhage. The rationale behind this or why this would be effective really comes from animal studies. After you have a hemorrhage, there is hemolysis of the red blood cells, there is a release of hemoglobin degradation products, in particular, iron, and the accumulation of iron in the hematoma and the surrounding tissue triggers a cascade of molecular and cellular events that lead to what we call secondary injury, characterized by inflammation, hydroxyl radical formation, and cell death. And many animal studies, animal models of intracerebral hemorrhage, whether in pigs or in rats, young or aged rats, have shown that treatment with deferoxamine can reduce iron in the brain after intracerebral hemorrhage and also results in improved performance on behavioral tests. And that was the reason why we moved into clinical testing. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, a lot of encouraging data before the trial. Can we hear a little bit about the trial, its design, and inclusion criteria, please? Dr. Magdy Selim:             Sure. So i-DEF was a phase 2 study, and actually it started as Hi-DEF, which was high dose deferoxamine, and then became i-DEF, which intermediate dose deferoxamine. So, it's a randomized, double blind, placebo control trial. We used something called futility design, which is actually sort of new in the stroke field. And we had 294 patients who had supratentorial hemorrhage that were randomized within 24 hours to either get placebo or deferoxamine. And deferoxamine initially was given at 62 mg per day for three days, but then we ran into some safety issues with this high dose, and that's why we lowered it to 32, and that became the intermediate dose, or the i-DEF. So, the only kind of thing unique about inclusion/exclusion criteria was that there was an age cutoff, patients had to be 80 or younger. They needed to have some deficit on the exam, so their NIH Stroke Scale had to be 6 or greater, and their GCS had to be greater than 6, and their modified Rankin before the onset of the hemorrhage had to be less than 1. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         And so, what were the primary and secondary outcomes in i-DEF? Dr. Magdy Selim:             The primary outcome was twofold actually. One of them was safety. One of the issues we ran into with the high dose is that the drug is associated with increased risk for adult respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS. So, we wanted to make sure that this lower dose was safe, and it does not increase the instance of ARDS. The second thing was, as I said, we used something called the futility design, and we wanted to compare the outcome of patients treated with deferoxamine versus placebo to determine whether it's futile to move to a large phase 3 trial or not. And what we were looking at is a difference in outcome and modified Rankin 0 to 2 at 90 days, and the difference would be at least 12% in favor of deferoxamine in order for us to move forward. You asked about the secondary outcomes as well? Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Yes. Dr. Magdy Selim:             So, actually, the secondary outcomes, they're relevant because they're relevant to the study that we just published. So, the secondary outcomes was also to look at modified Rankin 0 to 3, instead of 0 to 2, at 90 days and the difference between the two treatment groups. We wanted to look at the ordinal distribution of the Rankin at the same time point. And we also wanted to look at all the outcomes at six months, 180 days. And that came a little bit later in the course of the study because there was some evidence emerging at that time that maybe assessment of outcome later in intracerebral hemorrhage would be more accurate than assessing it early on. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, I want to come back to the secondary outcome, of course, that's sort of the topic of your current paper in this issue of the journal, but can you just briefly tell us, please, the primary outcome and the sort of results of what was published in 2019 with i-DEF before we move on to the current paper? Dr. Magdy Selim:             Yeah. So, as I said, the primary outcome was the difference in the proportion of patients that achieved modified Rankin 0 to 2 at 90 days, and what we wanted to see is a difference of around 12%. Unfortunately, the primary outcome was neutral, we did not see that. But what we saw actually, almost all the secondary outcomes were positive, except for the primary outcome. So, when we looked at the secondary outcome using modified Rankin 0 to 3, instead of 0 to 2, the difference was 12.1%. When we looked at the difference in the modified Rankin 0 to 2 at six months, the difference was 15.6% in favor of deferoxamine, but these were secondary outcomes and not the primary outcomes. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, the trial is almost positive. It just depends on how you define the primary outcome, which is really a nice segue to your current study. In the current study, you looked at this secondary outcome in a longitudinal way and looked at the mRS of 0 to 2 at six months from ICH. Can you please tell us about this current paper? Dr. Magdy Selim:             Yeah. So, one of the things that we did with i-DEF is that we were checking the modified Rankin at different time points for all the patients. So, we had it after one week, after one month, after two months, after three months, and after six months. And what we wanted really was a couple of things, just in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage without any treatment, what's the natural course of recovery? And the interesting thing we found out is that patients actually continue to improve over time, and that's what you expect, but what we didn't expect is that they even continue to improve after 90 days. Dr. Magdy Selim:             We always used to think that maximum recovery is around 90 days from ischemic stroke literature, but we saw a lot of patients getting better after 90 days. And this turns out to be also the case with deferoxamine, but the interesting thing is that the percentage of patients that had a good outcome, modified Rankin 0 to 2, was higher with deferoxamine at day seven, at day 30, at day 60, not at 90 days, but again at six months. So, actually, it was higher at all time points except our primary endpoint. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         So, Magdy, you've already answered my next question, which is exactly what you alluded to, deferoxamine seemed to have improved the outcomes at all of those time points, except for the 90 day, which was the primary outcome of your trial. Why do you think the magic was lost at 90 days? Dr. Magdy Selim:             This is really the million-dollar question. I think we obviously struggled over this. And we went back, we thought maybe there was misrating of the modified Rankin in some of the patients. We tried to correct for this. The difference was bigger, but still not significant. So, we don't really have a good reason to tell you why, at this particular time point, we didn't see the difference except bad luck, I think. But I mean, there are reasons, I think, the question that people actually ask me is the opposite, is why do you think a drug that you give for three days early on is going to make a difference after six months? And I think there are biological reasons to explain this. Dr. Magdy Selim:             So, what happened is that those hemorrhage patients have a lot of other problems. They have increased ICP, they have hydrocephalus, they have intraventricular hemorrhage, and actually iron has been implicated in the development of hydrocephalus in chronic white matter injury. So, my explanation is that you start early on with the treatment, it does help, but it takes a while for it to kick in and for this kind of medical complication to resolve until actually you see the true effect of the drug. And maybe that's why you see the unmasking at the end between the two groups. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Yeah, I think I want to recap this for our listeners. Very important to, again, think about those things that some of the acute therapies that we offer the patients may not have a measurable improvement outcome difference early on, certainly with intravenous thrombolysis, we saw that, whereas we saw measurable outcome difference at 90 days, or maybe in this case at six months, but not quite early on. So, it doesn't mean that they don't work. We just are unable to measure that difference and improvement early on. So, what do you think the future holds for deferoxamine? Are we going to see another trial? Dr. Magdy Selim:             Well, I certainly hope so. We're working on some few ideas for that. A lot of people think that maybe we should just do the same thing, but look at six months as the primary outcome. But I think we're actually, that's probably not our primary thinking at this point in time. So, we have published other papers, other analysis, to show that the effect of deferoxamine actually relates to the volume of the hemorrhage. So, if the hemorrhage is very small, there is very minimal benefit. If the hemorrhage is very large, also there is very minimal benefit. And that's really to get kind of the big bang for your buck. You really want people who have mild-to-moderate size hemorrhages. So, we're thinking of a couple of ways to go about deferoxamine with this, whether alone or in combination with other interventions. So, hopefully, we'll have some stuff to share with you in the coming few years, two or three. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         We'll definitely look forward to reading about those or being involved in the trials as a site, but there's a great way of just actually talking about my next question. It's just completely different than the current paper. I wanted to digress a bit and talk about the recently published intracerebral hemorrhage guidelines, which just published a few months ago. You were part of the guidelines committee. Can you give us a little bit of your point of view of what are the top two most important updates from the guidelines in ICH treatment? Dr. Magdy Selim:             Actually, the guidelines, for the first time this year, in the first page, they have the top 10 take-home messages or top 10 new ones. So, in my opinion, the most important ones, we usually tell you what to do, but here we tell you what not to do because we think it's not good for the patients. So, for example, using steroids just as a prophylactic therapy is actually not recommended. The same thing, we see a lot of people put patients with hemorrhage on hypertonic saline, hyperosmolar therapy, just prophylactically. I don't think there's any benefit that this helps as well, and the same thing for antiepileptic drugs. So, that was one important point. The second one was blood pressure lowering, and there is emphasis now that whatever you use to lower the blood pressure, you want to make sure that the blood pressure variability is very minimal and that there is a smooth kind of control over blood pressure that has been shown to be actually important in terms of help. I'm going to make them three, not two, because I think the third one is important. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Okay. I'll give you one more then. Dr. Magdy Selim:             Which is the first time we include this in the guideline, and with emphasis on the role of the home caregiver for hemorrhage patients and the psychological support, the education that they need, and the training that they need to actually care for these patients and how to improve their quality of life. So, I think that's an important aspect that we didn't touch upon before, and obviously very important. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Very important points. Let me just review them again for our listeners. So, don't do steroids, hypertonics, and preemptive antiepileptic therapies. They don't work. The second point that you raise is reduction of blood pressure, important to keep that in mind, but paying attention to blood pressure variability. And the third one, the importance of social aspect of care of patients with intracerebral hemorrhage. That's great for us. Let me just end with one last question. Magdy, thank you so much for all of this wonderful take-home messages from the current study from i-DEF and also the guidelines. There's been a lot of excitement in the field of ischemic stroke with the success of reperfusion therapies, and yet not much for intracerebral hemorrhage. What is your hope in terms of future therapies for ICH? Dr. Magdy Selim:             So, I happen to be one of the people who is very optimistic about the future of ICH. I think it's just a matter of time. But I think we need to make some changes. We need to really treat ICH as an emergency, so time is really important. And I think right now, you see a hemorrhage patient, they just put them on the side because they think that there's nothing to do. But the way I see the future evolving, and probably the breaking point to be, is that we can diagnose ICH in the field. You immediately lower the blood pressure, reverse coagulopathy if you can, and even kind of use hemostatic agents, if the FASTEST trial shows evidence to support that, and then you take them to the hospital where there might be some role for hematoma reduction using minimally invasive therapy and some other treatments like deferoxamine, or there are a lot of other agents to target the secondary injury at the same time. So, I think it's going to be a combination of things, and they need to happen in tandem and continuously, but we need to start quickly on these patients. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Dr. Magdy Selim, it's been a pleasure interviewing you on the podcast. We look forward to having you back and covering more of your work. Thank you for joining us. Dr. Magdy Selim:             Thank you very much for having me. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         And this concludes our podcast for the July 2022 issue of Stroke. Please be sure to check out this month's table of contents for a full list of publications, including a series of Focus Updates on the very topic of, you guessed it, intracerebral hemorrhage. These updates are great complements to the newly published American Heart Association guidelines for the management of patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage in May 2022. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         And with this, we end our July podcast and draw inspiration from one particular July story, which unfolded on July 20. In 1969, on this day, Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, and Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. The crew of Apollo 11 changed the course of history, landing humanity on another celestial body for the first time and later safely returning everyone back to earth. Armstrong, an experienced naval aviator, a test pilot, a decorated veteran, astronaut, and university professor, passed away in 2012 from complications of coronary artery disease, reminding us that every step we take in understanding, diagnosing, and treating vascular disorders is truly part of that giant leap to save the mankind. And what better way to do this than to stay alert with Stroke Alert. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         This program is copyright of the American Heart Association, 2022. The opinions expressed by speakers in this podcast are their own and not necessarily those of the editors or of the American Heart Association. For more, visit AHAjournals.org.

Dr. Davies shares his valuable insights about post-operative opioid studies, disproves some myths about NSAIDs, and explains his pre-operative and post-operative pain management regimen. --- CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR Laurel Road for Doctors https://www.laurelroad.com/healthcare-banking/ --- EARN CME Reflect on how this Podcast applies to your day-to-day and earn AMA PRA Category 1 CMEs: https://earnc.me/XyDsiw --- SHOW NOTES In this episode of BackTable Urology, Dr. Aditya Bagrodia and Dr. Ben Davies, Director of Urologic Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, discuss non-opioid approaches for post-operative patients. First, Dr. Davies discusses diversion as an indirect problem with prescribing too many opioids because many urologists forget that patients with opioid prescriptions can have family members and close contacts who have access to these pills as well. According to Dr. Davies, data shows that post-operative urologic surgery patients have a rate of addiction of 1-2% when prescribed opioids. In his opinion, most patients who undergo urologic procedures, such as cystectomies, TURPs, and partial nephrectomies, do not need narcotics for post-operative pain management. Prospective studies done in the general surgery and urological surgery field prove that there is no difference in satisfaction between patients who manage their pain via non-opioid and opioid approaches. Furthermore, opioids may cause idiosyncratic results in post-operative patients, such as anxiety and GI problems. Next, Dr. Davies disproves some myths about NSAIDs. He does not agree with the practice of holding off NSAIDs for a week post-operatively, Also, he sees no problem with giving oral Tylenol to NPO patients. He strongly believes that bleeding risk and kidney damage as a result of toradol is minimal, and explains that creatinine levels always rise a bit post-operatively. He encourages urologists to walk their patients through the post-op pain regimen before surgery and to have pamphlets ready for distribution. Dr. Davies explains that for the most part, patients understand that opioid-related mortality deaths are rising and that 90% fentanyl and heroin users start with opioids. He also discourages doctors from prescribing extra opioid pills to patients. Then, Dr. Davies explains his pre-operative and post-operative pain management regimen. Pre-operatively, he uses Tylenol, gabapentin, and celebrex. Intraoperatively, he uses IV ketamine, propofol, and precedex. As patients are waking up from surgery, he will give toradol. Post-operatively, he will prescribe Tylenol and Motrin. Finally, he emphasizes the need for buy-in from the hospital administration for a non-opioid approach. He discusses the importance of meeting with hospital administration and nurses to change the pain management culture of an institution. In his personal experience, he made a quality improvement project out of his non-opioid approach and figured out his personal strategy towards pain management before presenting it to his department. --- RESOURCES Pekala KR, Jacobs BL, Davies BJ. The Shrinking Grey Zone of Postoperative Narcotics in the Midst of the Opioid Crisis: The No-opioid Urologist. Eur Urol Focus. 2020 Nov 15;6(6):1168-1169. doi: 10.1016/j.euf.2019.08.014. Epub 2019 Sep 26. PMID: 31563546. Yu M, Davies BJ. Opium Wars to the Opioid Epidemic: The Same Narcotics Cause Addiction and Kill. Eur Urol. 2020 Jan;77(1):76-77. doi: 10.1016/j.eururo.2019.10.006. Epub 2019 Nov 8. PMID: 31711720. “Dreamland” by Sam Quinones https://samquinones.com/dreamland “The Least of Us” by Sam Quinones https://samquinones.com/theleastofus

One of the main concerns for surgical patients is how much pain they will experience after their procedure.  Dr. Kenneth Fan discusses the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocol, which not only reduces pain after surgery, but also decreases the use of opioids.    TRANSCRIPT Intro: MedStar Washington Hospital Center presents Medical Intel where our healthcare team shares health and wellness insights and gives you the inside story on advances in medicine. Host: We’re speaking with Dr. Ken Fan, a plastic surgeon at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Fan. Dr. Fan: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Host: Today we’re discussing ways to reduce pain after various types of plastic surgery. Dr. Fan, pain has to be one of the most common fears patients have prior to plastic surgery. Can you explain how much pain patients can expect from surgery? Dr. Fan: Yes. With the enhanced recovery after surgery, multimodality, multidisciplinary protocol, the most important thing is to set the expectation of pain. So, the first part of the series of treatments is the pre-operative assessment of the patient. So, we go through a detailed discussion with how the patient has recovered in previous surgeries and how they tolerate pain. I discuss with them how they can see themselves recover from this particular surgery. This discussion is very important because not all patients perceive pain the same way and not all surgeries have the same amount of pain. Host: How long does recovery normally take after plastic surgery? Dr. Fan: Recovery varies, based on the type of procedure. Some procedures are out-patient, meaning that patients are discharged and go home. Some procedures require a 3 to 4-day in-patient stay. The benefit of using this ERAS multimodal analgesia protocol is that no matter how long the recovery, it’s shortened - patients return back to base-line functioning sooner and have decreased narcotic usage. Host: What kind of treatments do you provide patients to help them deal with pain or discomfort after plastic surgery? Dr. Fan: So, we use a combination of pre-operative non-narcotic medication that decreases the way the nerves fire. So, they don’t fire strongly, and they don’t fire as hard. Intraoperatively we work with our anesthesia colleagues and they provide a lot of medications that decrease nausea and vomiting after surgery and decrease the amount of pain. We also use wide-spread local blocks, meaning we use local anesthesia that also targets the nerves and prevents them from firing. This also decreases pain. After surgery, we usually provide a cocktail of medications that are also non-opioid anesthesia. They also target the way the nerves fire and they subdue everything and decrease the pain levels for patients. And we found with this ERAS protocol after major surgery, patients are only taking 1 to 2 narcotic tabs after surgery. And, this is research that is being published soon. Host: Is this one way that MedStar Washington Hospital Center is trying to decrease narcotic usage in light of the current opioid epidemic? Dr. Fan: Absolutely and thank you for asking. Yes, opioid use across America has reached a tipping point to where it’s been declared a health emergency. And this protocol especially addresses narcotic use across the board. With our research we’ve been able to demonstrate that application of this protocol has reduced opioid use significantly. And this is great because patients are not reliant on narcotic usage. This takes them out of the cycle of pain and opioid dependence that we unfortunately have seen as health care providers. And this also has the additional benefit of just returning patients to baseline and making them feel a lot better. Host: Does pain tolerance vary from person to person? If so, to what extent? Dr. Fan: Absolutely. I think some patients have higher pain tolerances, some patients have lower pain tolerances. Some patients have had extensive history of opioid use. And therefore, it’s up to us, the provider of the patient, before surgery, to have a discussion and so we can better manage their pain after surgery. Host: Could you share a story in which a patient received optimal care for their plastic surgery with minimal pain at MedStar Washington Hospital Center? Dr. Fan: Yes. There’s one patient in particular that comes to mind. This is a patient who has given permission for me to share her story. She previously has had more than six hernia operations. Her most recent one required a prolonged hospital stay, over two weeks, part of which was in the ICU. As you can imagine, she was not excited to come to the hospital after her hernia came back. In fact, she was putting off her surgery since July of 2018 and her hernia, subsequently, got a lot more complicated. But, long story short, because of the collaborations between the general surgeons, the anesthesia providers, and us, the plastic surgeons, we were able to devise a plan that decreased the amount of pain and decreased the amount of surgery that we had to do. She ended up doing great after surgery. She was with this ERAS protocol, was walking postoperative day 1. She said that this was the best she’s ever felt in her 7 previous surgeries and that she was very excited to tell all her friends that MedStar Washington Hospital Center offers this service. Host: Thanks for joining us today, Dr. Fan. Dr. Fan: Thank you for having me. Conclusion: Thanks for listening to Medical Intel with MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Find more podcasts from our healthcare team by visiting medstarwashington.org/podcast or subscribing in iTunes or iHeartRadio.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley:             And I'm Greg Hundley, associate editor and director of the Pauley Heart Center from VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Dr Carolyn Lam:                So, Greg, are we any closer to the holy grail of safe ED discharge for acute heart failure based on a risk score? Well, we're going to be discussing that coming right up after Greg and I share about the papers that we'd like to discuss today. Lovely issue, isn't it? Dr Greg Hundley:             Yup, and time to get your coffee and bring it up. My first paper, Carolyn, is from Michael Chu from London Health Sciences Center, and is really investigating the surgical management of thoracic aortic disease, and looking at the impact of gender or sex related differences. Sex related differences have not been thoroughly studied. This group looked at a total of 1653 patients, 30% were women, who underwent thoracic aortic surgery with hypothermic circulatory arrest between the years of 2002 and 2017 across Canada in 10 institutions.                                                 Well, women underwent less aortic root reconstruction, including aortic root replacement, Ross procedures, or valve sparing root operations. But, even with less invasive, the women experienced higher rates of mortality, 11% versus 7%, stroke, and that composite of the thoracic surgeons' adverse events. On multi variable analysis, female sex or women was an independent predictor of overall mortality, stroke, and those comorbidities. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Greg, you know how much I love these papers, so I'm going to repeat that. You're saying the women received less ominous procedures and yet had worse outcomes, and this was independent of the clinical covariances, right? Dr Greg Hundley:             Absolutely. Putting all this together, women underwent thoracic aortic surgery a little bit older, and with larger index aortic aneurysm size than men. Intraoperatively, women undergo fewer concomitant procedures, such as the aortic root repairs, and things that you just mentioned. But nevertheless, women experience significantly worse outcomes identified as an independent predictor of mortality, stroke, and that composite endpoint for mortality, morbidity, after multi variable analysis.                                                 What should we think about this? Well, sex specific considerations are important when considering thoracic aortic surgery and future research should focus on the development of a personalized approach to thoracic aortic surgery with respect to gender. For example, utilization of maybe lower size thresholds for women for aortic aneurysms should be considered, and for earlier interventions, and improved outcomes.                                                 Carolyn, tell me about one of your papers. Dr Carolyn Lam:                All right, so I chose a paper looking at the stroke outcomes in the COMPASS trial. Now, let's remind everybody that the COMPASS trial, where patients with stable coronary artery disease or peripheral artery disease, and randomly assigned to receive aspirin 100 milligrams daily, rivaroxaban five milligrams twice daily, or the combination of rivaroxaban 2.5 milligrams twice daily plus aspirin. Patients requiring anticoagulation with a stroke within a month had a previous lacunar stroke or intracerebral hemorrhage were excluded.                                                 Now, in the current paper, and this is from Dr Sharma from Population Health Research Institute, and their colleagues, basically they looked at a detailed analysis of the stroke by type, predictors, and anti-thrombotic effects in the key subgroups. They found that the combination of low dose rivaroxaban and aspirin prevented stroke and disabling stroke better than aspirin in patients without atrial fibrillation and with stable vascular disease, and without an increasing risk of hemorrhagic stroke; which is really important. This effect was consistent across subgroups of baseline risk, and particularly marked in those with a history of previous stroke. Dr Greg Hundley:             Carolyn, what about that rivaroxaban five milligrams twice daily alone? Dr Carolyn Lam:                There was no significant difference in the occurrence of stroke in the rivaroxaban alone group compared with aspirin. But all of this simply says perhaps low dose rivaroxaban and aspirin may be a really important new anti-thrombotic option for primary and secondary stroke prevention in patients with clinical stable atherosclerosis. Dr Greg Hundley:             Very interesting. I'm going to follow your lead and go into another sort of anticoagulant-related topic on iliofemoral deep vein thrombosis. This paper is by Suresh Vedantham from the Washington University of St. Louis.                                                 Let's talk about just what is the definition? This is a DVT that involves the iliac and/or the common femoral vein with or without involvement of additional veins. It basically obstructs the outflow of the veins. These patients are phenotypically distinct from patients with cath or femoral popliteal DVT because that totally obstructs flow, and they have more frequent recurrence of venous thromboembolic events, and more frequent post-thrombotic syndrome. Well, that's a horrible condition because of that obstruction, it leads to calf muscle dysfunction, edema, subcutaneous fibrosis, tissue hypoxia, and ulceration. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Great background. What did this study show? Dr Greg Hundley:             This is a sub-study of the ATTRACT trial. The ATTRACT trial basically is looking at anticoagulation plus perhaps mechanical intervention, or direct catheter directed thrombolysis therapy versus just anticoagulation alone. This sub-study is 391 patients with acute DVT involving just the iliac or the common femoral veins, and following these individuals for 24 months to compare short and long-term outcomes.                                                 What did the study show? Well, this interventional group did have a reduction in leg pain and swelling, and improvement in quality of life related to that lower extremity. But, no overall difference in overall quality of life, and very importantly, no difference in the occurrence of this post thrombotic syndrome. Dr Carolyn Lam:                That's kind of disappointing. I understand that the ATTRACT study is not the first to look at this, though. That was in an editorial discussing this. Could you tell us about that? Dr Greg Hundley:             Yeah, Carolyn. Jay Giri from University of Pennsylvania just had an incredible editorial. I think if you have an opportunity, listeners, to take a look at that, I highly recommend it. He reminded us of the CaVenT trial, which is basically performed as an open label randomized control trial of 209 patients across 20 hospitals in Norway.                                                 What was different in the CaVenT trial is that at 24 months of follow up, the intervention with thrombolysis and systemic anticoagulation improved iliofemoral patency. It reduced the incidence of this post thrombotic syndrome. In ATTRACT, in this sub-study, it was intravenous thrombolysis, systemic anticoagulation, and mechanical intervention on the vein versus in the other study from Norway, CaVenT, just the inter vein thrombolysis and the systemic anticoagulation.                                                 What Dr Giri points out is that maybe something related to intervention in that vein when you're stripping out thrombus, et cetera, are we damaging the veins in the vessel that prevents reflux, et cetera?                                                 I think really moving forward, you're going to have to personalize this decision in individual patients until we have more data on this subject. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Great learning. I learned a lot from this next paper, too, because I actually chose a basic science paper. This is a paper that uncovers a new fine tuning factor that modulates myocardial infarction induced inflammation. That is a small GTPase called RhoE.                                                 In this study, Drs Chang from Texas A&M University College of Medicine, and Song from Fuwai Hospital in Beijing used three genetic mouse model lines. Those are the global knockout, the cardiomyocyte specific RhoE heterozygous mouse, and the cardiomyocyte specific RhoE over expression mouse. With this combination, they showed that RhoE deficiency causes excessive inflammatory response in infarct animal heart, resulting in enlarged heart, decreased contractility, and increased mortality. The mechanism is that RhoE binds to P65 and P50, which impedes their dimerization and blocks these two proteins from nuclear translocation. Now, over expression of cardiac RhoE inhibits NF-κB, restrains post MI inflammation, and improves cardiac function and survival.                                                 Importantly as you always say, Greg, there is human data. They found that the expression of RhoE was elevated in the infarct patient heart and that patients with a higher expression of RhoE exhibited a better prognosis and better cardiac function recovery. Dr Greg Hundley:             Carolyn, tell me a little bit about the clinical significance of this. Dr Carolyn Lam:                You just wanted to ask me a tough question. I can see it on your face. Basically, I think this is really exciting because RhoE may serve as a new potential biomarker for the assessment of myocardial infarction in patients, and manipulation of RhoE could be a potential therapeutic approach for MI. There. Dr Greg Hundley:             Very good. Dr Carolyn Lam:                That's all the time we have for our little discussion here. Now, let's go onto the feature paper. ...                                                 Over 80% of emergency department patients with acute heart failure are admitted to the hospital. Now, contrast this with the fact that over 80% of all emergency department visits result in discharge. So, why is that many other emergency department based cardiovascular disease processes like for acute coronary syndrome have evolved from high rates of admission to timely and safe discharge whereas decision making in acute heart failure has not experienced a similar evolution. Do we need perhaps a better acute heart failure prognostic score that's validated?                                                 Well, guess what? We're going to talk about this right now in our feature discussion, and a beautiful feature paper that we're so proud to have the corresponding author, Dr Douglas Lee from University of Toronto right here to discuss; along with the managing editor, Dr Justin Ezekowitz, who's associate editor from University of Alberta, and the editorialist, Dr Sean Collins from Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Welcome everyone, and Doug, please, could you just start by telling us about this great paper? Dr Douglas Lee:                 We validated, and it's a tool, decision making tool, for acute heart failure patients in the emergency department. We, in this study, wanted to prospectively validate a decision making prognostic tool called the Emergency Heart Failure Mortality Risk Grade, or EHFMRG for short, to see how well it performed in the real world busy emergency department hospital setting.                                                 We studied just under 2,000 patients who came to emergency departments at multiple centers, and asked physicians to rate their prognostic estimation of what's going to happen to that patient in the next seven days. We compared that with the EHFMRG model, which predicts outcomes of seven days and 30 days. We were very careful to ask physicians to provide their prognostic estimates. This is their intuitive guesstimation of the risk of the patient before calculating the score because we didn't want the physicians to be influenced by the score.                                                 What we found was that when we looked at how well physicians' estimates performed, they actually performed quite well. The c-statistic for physician estimated risk was around .7, which is a reasonable discrimination. However, the physicians' estimates were not as good as the EHFMRG risk score, which had a C greater than .8. The mathematical model seemed to do better in terms of predicting what's going to happen to the patient than physicians' estimates.                                                 Interestingly, when we combined the physicians' estimates with the EHFMRG risk score, the c-statistic improved by another 1%, so there's some additive value of having both factors combined.                                                 The other interesting finding was that patients in the lowest risk groups had 0% mortality at seven days, and 0% mortality at 30 days. We may be able to identify, using the score, patients who have a very low risk of events in that seven to 30 day period after emergency department presentation. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Thanks so much, Doug. I have to tell you, I am a fan of the EHFMRG score. In fact, we're trying to study how well it performs in our local situation even here in Singapore.                                                 Justin, you've been thinking a lot about this. I would love for you to share the reactions that we got when we discussed this among the editors. Dr Justin Ezekowitz:        We had a lot of good discussion about this from a number of different aspects. First, it's an in-practice assessment, a physician-based risk assessment, as we survey hundreds of physicians in the ER, which is a busy environment, and get these types of information. That's a very unique piece of this study where, in addition to the just under 2,000 patients and collecting the other data in a robust way, this really does have a potential to contribute to the literature.                                                 A lot of the discussion was about how data rich this is, and that this is an area where unlike acute cardiovascular disease where there are good risk assessment tools and other therapies, it's a really need of a scoring system that was well validated, can be replicated, and both in clinical practice as well as in selective cohorts. Doug, my congrats to your and the other parts of the team that's helped put this together.                                                 One of the questions that came up when we were discussing it was the risk textiles and buckets were very important for people to think about the very low risk, as you mentioned, 0% all the way up through much higher percents for seven day mortality, but how discrepant the risk was of the physicians versus the mathematical model; and a very good reminder of the inaccuracy of sometimes our assessments of risk in practice, especially in acute care.                                                 I wonder if you could comment on what your fence was from the physicians who participated in the study, and then the data of those, the most striking findings of that piece about where physicians make judgements on risk in for that seven-day mortality. Just any comments you may have? Dr Douglas Lee:                 We didn't know what to expect because there haven’t been many studies of this type before. What we found in our study was that physicians tended to overestimate the risk of lower risk patients. They thought bad things would happen to healthier patients, just to put it very simply. Physicians also underestimated the risk of the highest risk patients. They thought that the highest risk patients would do well.                                                 We were surprised about that finding, but also, we were not surprised in the fact that it seems to explain some of our earlier findings that in our earlier work, we found that low risk patients are hospitalized, and we think it's probably that physicians are admitting those patients because they want to ensure that they're making a safe decision; and no harm will fall in the patient. Maybe physicians are erring on the side of admitting those patients, even though they know they're a little bit low risk.                                                 At the other extreme, physicians underestimated risk in the highest risk patients. We think it might explain the observation that we made previously that sometimes high risk patients are discharged home, and they die at home after discharge. That may be because patients who look well to physicians, I think there's great value in the clinical experience of a seasoned physician looking at a patient and knowing that, that patient is sick or not sick. But in certain cases, patients may look relatively well, but their numbers would indicate that they're actually higher risk. I think it's that group where we found they're higher risk, but physicians thought that they were healthier than they were. It seems physicians' estimations really have great value, but it seems that they can be improved. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Sean, you discussed this beautifully in your editorial. Share with us your thoughts, and especially thoughts on the question you posed: are we any closer to the holy grail of safe emergency department discharge based on acute heart failure risk rules? Dr Sean Collins:                 Doug, kudos to you. Nearly 2,000 patients, nine different hospitals, prospective data collection, as Justin said. I don't think this can be overstated. From a data cleaning perspective, this is truly a labor of love, and to get this done, congratulations to you and your team.                                                 I think the most interesting part of this is this exact disconnect of patients look well who are high risk, and patients may look a little bit unwell who may be low risk, ironically. That's where a risk tool is much needed, as Carolyn said in her introduction to sort of change the dynamic of 80 to 90% of patients are admitted to the hospital. If we even chipped away at 10 to 15% to able to be discharged, it would be a huge win for partly for management for an emergency department perspective.                                                 I think that the importantly, the next steps will be now looking at implementing this in some sort of a randomized manner, somewhat like what you did with asking physicians gestalt about what their level of risk is, but really finding out how does a physician gestalt when it comes to nuance and heart failure. A relative amount of congestion, even when the tool says the patient may be low risk, can they go home? I think that will be the crucial next step to find out how much does this augment and/or detract from physician decision making? We have a long way to go, as Carolyn said. It's just the complete opposite at almost every other disease process, including chest pain, from a discharge perspective. Even a little bit improvement would be great, so I'm looking forward to seeing the next steps, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the next steps, Doug. Dr Douglas Lee:                 There's actually great value in physicians' clinical judgment. It's been, I think relatively understudied. I'm hopeful that future studies where decision tools or prognostic tools are validated, we can see more potentially, more comparisons with clinicians because we don't have a real great understanding, I think, of how doctors think, especially in an acute setting. More research in this area, I think would be really helpful, especially as we ... As more and more clinical decision tools being published, it would be great to see how well they hold up against good clinician judgment.                                                 In terms of next steps and implementation, when we talk to our emergency colleagues, they have brought up an issue about it's great that patients are low risk, and that we could potentially discharge them from hospital; but where is the receptor to take that patient and to care for that patient once they've left the hospital? Are they going to get good care once they leave the hospital? Are there structures in place?                                                 We're now embarking on testing this in the clinical trial where we will be comparing two strategies. The first strategy will be using the risk score at a hospital-wide level, and then discharging home patients who are in the lower risk categories, and having them follow up, and receive their care in a rapid ambulatory follow up clinic within two to three days after discharge from the emergency. This will be compared to the control, which is not using the risk score, and having usual follow up care. This trial is called the Comparison of Outcomes and Access to Heart Failure Trial, or the COAHFT trial. It is currently ongoing. Dr Sean Collins:                 Great point, Doug. As Carolyn suggested with chest pain and heart failure as the interesting dichotomy is that unlike chest pain, when we safely rule somebody out and send them home, we're sort of done with that acute episode. Heart failure, it doesn't end. We've found that they're safe enough to go home, but now they need great collaboration and outpatient support with their heart failure provider, which may be as equally heavy lift as externally validating the EHFMRG score. You bring up a great point, which is we need to have outpatient follow up and collaboration for this to be successful. Thanks. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Awesome comments, guys. Could I switch tracks a bit and maybe just ask Justin to round up by sharing? Circulation, we get a lot of papers about risk scores and so on. There's a bit of fatigue, I think, about scores in all kinds of things. Now, could you maybe tell us, Justin, what makes us look at a paper twice, and in fact, feature this one with a good editorial? I mean it's clearly very clinically applicable. Could you share some thoughts there? Dr Justin Ezekowitz:        Yes, that's a great point. The things that make a risk score like this kind of elevated into kind of a circulation level of manuscript is A) the data quality has to be excellent. There has to be lots of completeness of data, but also capture of elements that we think are quite important. Two, the data science about how it's analyzed and put together, and interpreted, it has to be to the bar that we feel would be robust, and be able ... if somebody could repeat it and replicate it without an obvious challenge to the quality.                                                 The third, I think is the clinical applicability. It's okay to write a data model and come up with all these great risk scores, but if they haven't been thought through about how either a patient will be seeing this, or clinicians behave, or the environment that it has to be deployed in that, that isn't necessarily going to be something that is going to be implemented. Then, the question is: why would somebody do the study in the first place?                                                 Now, it's okay if somebody's forward thinking and saying, 'Look, EMRs are coming, or other EHRs around, so this could be implemented if there was enough impetuous and it's a good enough quality.' That's actually okay, but in the reverse where if you try to implement a model that is too complex, and it's in a hand-off to the environment, it just won't work. We just want to make sure people have thought that next knowledge translation and dissemination approach through.                                                 The final part is things that have a very local impact are, that are very unique to the environment they're in, such as it only would work in your hometown or your own country because of some environment, that's okay. But under that, the much more global focus that, that is, it could be picked up and trans located to any major city, providence, state, or country, because vis vises are global. Those things have a much greater impact because the circulation leadership is global. The patients are global. The clinicians who care for them are also global. People are all looking for very similar situations and can adapt to their own environments. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Awesome, Justin. I don't think any of us could have said it better. Those are the reasons that we're so grateful that you publish with us, Doug. Thank you so much, Sean, for your excellent editorial, too.                                                 Thank you, listeners, for joining us today. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Don't forget to tune in again next week.                                                 This program is copyright American Heart Association 2019.  

Background Retroperitoneal lipomas are an extremely rare condition with only 17 cases described in the literature since 1980. They can reach enormous size and cause significant abdominal symptoms. The most important differential diagnosis is the well-differentiated liposarcoma, which preoperatively often may not definitely be ruled out. Case presentation We present the case of a 73 year-old Caucasian patient with a giant retroperitoneal lipoma of 9 kg measuring 55 cm in diameter. The patient presented with abdominal pain and swelling that had been slowly progressive for the last 15 years. On computerized tomography an immense retroperitoneal tumor was revealed. Intraoperatively, the tumor did not show any signs of infiltrative growth, therefore sole tumor extirpation was performed. Conclusion Retroperitoneal lipomas are not clearly distinguishable from well-differentiated liposarcomas on imaging and even biopsies may be misleading. Moreover, abdominal symptoms, i.e. pain, obstipation and dysphagia may occur due to mechanical displacement. Therefore, surgical exploration with complete oncological resection is the therapy of choice if malignity cannot be ruled out.

Purpose: To describe new details of epiretinal cell proliferation in flat-mounted internal limiting membrane specimens. Methods: One hundred nineteen internal limiting membrane specimens were removed en bloc with epiretinal membranes from 79 eyes with macular pucker (MP) and 40 eyes with vitreomacular traction syndrome. Intraoperatively, posterior vitreous detachment was assessed as complete or incomplete. Whole specimens were flat-mounted on glass slides and processed for interference and phase-contrast microscopy, cell viability assay, and immunocytochemistry. Results: Mean cell viability percentage was higher in MP than in vitreomacular traction syndrome. Two cell distribution patterns were found. Anti-CD163 labeling presented predominantly in MP with complete posterior vitreous detachment. CD45 expression was similar in all groups of diagnosis. Anti-glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) labeling was found in MP irrespective of the extent of posterior vitreous detachment. Alpha-SMA (alpha-smooth muscle actin) labeling was mainly presented in MP with incomplete posterior vitreous detachment and in vitreomacular traction syndrome. Simultaneous antibody labeling included GFAP/CD45, GFAP/CD163, CD163/CD45, and CD163/alpha-SMA. Conclusion: Hyalocytes constitute a major cell type of epiretinal cell proliferation in eyes with MP and vitreomacular traction syndrome. Glial cells, notably retinal Muller cells, are involved as well. It appears that transdifferentiation of cells in vitreomacular traction might be more frequent than previously thought and that those cells possess a greater variability of immunocytochemical properties than expected. RETINA 33:77-88, 2013

Purpose. To describe new details of epiretinal cell proliferation in flat-mounted internal limiting membrane (ILM) specimens. Methods. One hundred and nineteen ILM specimens were removed en-bloc with epiretinal membranes (ERMs) from 79 eyes with macular pucker (MP) and 40 eyes with vitreomacular traction syndrome (VMTS). Intraoperatively, posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) was assessed as complete or incomplete. Whole specimens were flat-mounted on glass slides, and processed for interference and phase contrast microscopy, cell viability assay, and immunocytochemistry. Results. Mean cell viability percentage was higher in MP than in VMTS. Two cell distribution patterns were found. Anti-CD163 labeling presented predominantly in MP with complete PVD. CD45 expression was similar in all groups of diagnosis. Anti-GFAP labeling was found in MP irrespective of the extent of PVD. Alpha-SMA labeling mainly presented in MP with incomplete PVD and in VMTS. Simultaneous antibody labeling included GFAP/CD45, GFAP/CD163, CD163/CD45, and CD163/α-SMA. Conclusions. Hyalocytes constitute a major cell type of epiretinal cell proliferation in eyes with MP and VMTS. Glial cells, notably retinal Müller cells, are involved as well. It appears that transdifferentiation of cells in vitreomacular traction might be more frequent than previously thought and that those cells possess even more different immunocytochemical properties than expected.

Fri, 1 Feb 1991 12:00:00 +0100 https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/9832/1/coagulation_changes_and_the_influence_of_the_early_perfusate_in_the_course_of_orthotopic_liver_transplantation_9832.pdf Riess, H.; Huhn, D.; Jochum, Marianne; Slama, K.-J.; Neuhaus, P.; Kierzek, B.; Himmelreich, G.