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"Valvular disease is considered the next cardiac epidemic because of its strong association with age and the rapid aging of the population worldwide," said principal investigator Dr Javier Bermejo, a cardiologist at Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañon, Madrid, Spain. "The only established treatment is repair or replacement of the valve surgically or percutaneously," he continued. "But symptoms often remain or reappear in the long-term. Residual pulmonary hypertension is the most important risk factor for death and disability after successful correction of the valvular lesion." Pulmonary hypertension refers to increased blood pressure in the pulmonary artery. In patients with long-standing valvular disease, the high pressure in the left side of the heart is transmitted backwards to the lung vessels which react by thickening. This process may not revert after valve treatment, resulting in persistent pulmonary hypertension. Sildenafil (cen...

Cumulative probability of an ischaemic incident in the brain in the closed versus not-closed groups. Credit: Image courtesy of European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Closure of the left atrial appendage during heart surgery protects the brain, according to late-breaking research presented today in a Hot Line LBCT Session at ESC Congress. The results suggest that closure should be routinely added to open heart surgery. "This is the first randomised study to show that closure of the left atrial appendage during open heart surgery effectively protects against brain infarctions and stroke," said Assoc Prof Helena Domínguez, the cardiologist who designed the study. "A stroke following open heart surgery can have devastating consequences for patients and their families," said principal investigator Dr Park-Hansen, from the Department of Cardiology at Bispebjerg/Frederiksberg University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark. "Expectations of returning to wor...

Salt retention is the main culprit behind drug-resistant hypertension (RHTN), with older diuretic medications being the most effective treatment, according to new results from the PATHWAY-2 study. The research, presented at ESC Congress today, "will change clinical practice across the world and will help improve the blood pressure and outcomes of our patients with resistant hypertension ," said study investigator Dr Bryan Williams, Chair of Medicine at University College London, UK. "This has been a wonderful story of using sophisticated modern methods to solve an old problem -- why some patients have seemingly intractable hypertension," added Dr Morris Brown, chief investigator for the PATHWAY studies from Queen Mary University, London. "The discovery of salt overload as the underlying cause has enabled us to target the hormone which drives this, and to treat or cure most of the patients." As many as one in ten patients with high blood pressure h...

A breakthrough discovery in the field of cardiovascular fibrosis research made at Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) and National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) has been licensed to a newly launched company Enleofen Bio Pte Ltd, a Singapore-funded biotechnology start-up. Enleofen Bio plans to use the intellectual property (IP) derived from the Duke-NUS and NHCS research to develop first-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of multiple fibrotic human diseases including cardiac and pulmonary fibrosis. Fibrosis is the formation of excessive connective tissue, similar to the formation of scar tissue during the healing process; however, the excessive connective tissue in fibrotic disease does not heal but rather disrupts the structure and function of the organ and tissue where it forms, rendering it diseased. This process may affect many tissues within the body and is the main pathology behind heart and renal failure. Professor Stuart Cook along with Assistant Professor Sebastian S...

In most clinical trials for cancer therapy, investigators test treatments in patients with advanced disease. But a recent cardiovascular secondary prevention study has given researchers a unique opportunity: to explore the effectiveness of giving a drug to patients before cancer emerges. At the European Society of Cardiology meeting, Paul M. Ridker, MD, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at BWH, and colleagues presented findings from CANTOS (Canakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study). In addition to their cardiovascular results, Ridker and colleagues shared that patients who received the anti-inflammatory therapy canakinumab had a marked reduction in the incidence of lung cancer and lung cancer mortality. In this high-risk population, death from cancer was reduced by half in the group of people who received the highest dosage of the drug. These findings are detailed in a paper published simultaneously in  The Lancet . "As an inflammator...

Investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital today announced results of a clinical trial culminating from 25 years of cardiovascular research work. At the European Society of Cardiology meeting and in a paper published simultaneously in the  New England Journal of Medicine , Paul M. Ridker, MD, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at BWH, and colleagues presented findings from CANTOS (Canakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study), a trial designed to test whether reducing inflammation among people who have had a prior heart attack can reduce risk of another cardiovascular event in the future. The team reports a significant reduction in risk of recurrent heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular death among participants who received a targeted anti-inflammatory drug that lowered inflammation but had no effects on cholesterol. "These findings represent the end game of more than two decades of research, stemming from a critical observati...

Coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) is the best method of treating artherosclerotic coronary arteries in diabetes patients with multivessel disease, even in the presence of type 1 diabetes, a new study from Karolinska Institutet reports, clearing up a question in the current recommendation. The study is published in  Journal of the American College of Cardiology  (JACC). International guidelines recommend coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) over the use of balloon catheters (in a process called percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI) to widen artherosclerotic coronary arteries in diabetes patients with two or more diseased coronary vessels. However, since the underlying research has not differentiated between patients with type 2 diabetes and the less common type 1 diabetes, it has been unclear whether the recommendation applies to both types. "Since type 1 diabetes is a different disease with different complications, it's never been given that the treatment sho...

A research team led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and collaborators has shown, for the first time, that it may be possible to nonsurgically treat or even prevent the damage to a major heart valve that often occurs after a heart attack. In their report published in the  Journal of the American College of Cardiology , the investigators -- including co-senior authors at Boston Children's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital -- describe how treatment with the antihypertension drug losartan reduced mitral valve damage in an animal model of heart attack. This sort of damage typically occurs in 25 percent of heart attack patients and can lead to heart failure and an increased risk of death. "Our study supports a new concept transforming how we think about heart valves," says Robert Levine, MD, of the Heart Valve Program and the Cardiac Ultrasound Laboratory in the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at MGH, co-senior author of the report. ...

oung adults, particularly men, lag behind middle-aged and older adults in awareness and treatment of high blood pressure, putting this population at an increased risk for heart attack and stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal  Hypertension . High blood pressure is a leading risk factor for heart attack and stroke and is also a significant public health burden, costing the United States about $110 billion in direct and indirect costs in 2015, according to American Heart Association estimates. American Heart Association guidelines define blood pressure as normal at less than 120/80 and high blood pressure as 140/90 or above. "While hypertension awareness, treatment and control have improved overall since the early 2000s, all three remain worse in young adults -- those aged 18-39," said senior study author Andrew Moran, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. The study, based on ...

A large study conducted across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia has validated the ESC recommendations for predicting and preventing sudden cardiac death (SCD) in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). The HCM-EVIDENCE study, presented at ESC Congress 20171, tested the ESC's recommendations in a diverse cohort of patients, said study investigator Constantinos O'Mahony, MRCP(UK). "Since 2014, the ESC has recommended using a special risk prediction tool called the HCM Risk-SCD to identify which patients are at highest risk for sudden death and would benefit most from having a prophylactic implantable cardioverter defibrillator," explained Dr O'Mahony, from St. Bartholomew's Centre for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease, St Bartholomew's Hospital, and the University College London Centre for Heart Muscle Disease, Institute of Cardiovascular Science, London. "But, whenever a risk model is created, there are concerns about ho...