An international survey in Latin America on the practice of interventional cardiology during the COVID-19 pandemic,with a particular focus on myocardial infarction

Netherlands Heart Journal - A reduction in the number of interventional cardiology procedures has emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey was performed to...     

Reappraisal of Atrial fibrillation: interaction between hyperCoagulability,Electrical remodelling and Vascular destabilisation in the progression of AF (RACE V) Tissue Bank Project: study design

Netherlands Heart Journal - The development of atrial fibrillation (AF) is a complex multifactorial process. Over the past few decades, much has been learned about the pathophysiological...     

Guidelines for the management of myocardial infarction/injury with non-obstructive coronary arteries (MINOCA): a position paper from the Dutch ACS working group

Netherlands Heart Journal - Patients with myocardial infarction and non-obstructive coronary arteries (MINOCA), defined as angiographic stenosis <50%, represent a conundrum given...     

Expectations and perceived barriers to widespread implementation of e‑Health in cardiology practice: Results from a national survey in the Netherlands

Introduction

Expectations of physicians concerning e‑Health and perceived barriers to implementation in clinical practice are scarcely reported in the literature. The purpose of this study was to assess these aspects of cardiovascular e‑Health.

Methods

A survey was sent to members of the Netherlands Society of Cardiology. In total, the questionnaire contained 30 questions about five topics: personal use of smartphones, digital communication between respondents and patients, current e‑Health implementation in clinical practice, expectations about e‑Health and perceived barriers for e‑Health implementation. Age, personal use of smartphones and professional environment were noted as baseline characteristics.

Results

In total, 255 respondents filled out the questionnaire (response rate 25%); 89.4% of respondents indicated that they considered e‑Health to be clinically beneficial, improving patient satisfaction (90.2%), but also that it will increase the workload (83.9%). Age was a negative predictor and personal use of smartphones was a positive predictor of having high expectations. Lack of reimbursement was identified by 66.7% of respondents as a barrier to e‑Health implementation, as well as a lack of reliable devices (52.9%) and a lack of data integration with electronic medical records (EMRs) (69.4%).

Conclusion

Cardiologists are in general positive about the possibilities of e‑Health implementation in routine clinical care; however, they identify deficient data integration into the EMR, reimbursement issues and lack of reliable devices as major barriers. Age and personal use of smartphones are predictors of expectations of e‑Health, but the professional working environment is not.

     

Treatment patterns of non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome patients presenting at non-PCI centres in the Netherlands and possible logistical consequences of adopting same-day transfer to PCI centres: a registry-based evaluation

Netherlands Heart Journal - European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines recommend same-day transfer to a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) centre for angiography in high-risk...     

The genetics of atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome

medizinische genetik - Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is a disorder characterized by thrombocytopenia and microangiopathic hemolytic anemia due to endothelial injury. aHUS is...     

Prognostic implications of resting distal coronary-to-aortic pressure ratio compared with fractional flow reserve: a 10-year follow-up study after deferral of revascularisation

Netherlands Heart Journal - The distal coronary-to-aortic pressure ratio (Pd/Pa) is a non-hyperaemic physiological index to assess the functional severity of coronary stenoses. Studies...     

The challenge of choosing in cardiovascular risk management

Netherlands Heart Journal - Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. For many years guidelines have listed optimal preventive therapy. More...     

Downgrade of cardiac defibrillator devices to pacemakers in elderly heart failure patients: clinical considerations and the importance of shared decision-making

Netherlands Heart Journal - Implantable cardioverter defibrillators are implanted on a large scale in patients with heart failure (HF) for the prevention of sudden cardiac death. There are...     

Rationale and design of the PHOspholamban RElated CArdiomyopathy intervention STudy (i-PHORECAST)

Netherlands Heart Journal - The p.Arg14del (c.40_42delAGA) phospholamban (PLN) pathogenic variant is a founder mutation that causes dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and arrhythmogenic...     

Feasibility and potential benefit of pre-procedural CMR imaging in patients with ischaemic cardiomyopathy undergoing cardiac resynchronisation therapy

Netherlands Heart Journal - To determine the feasibility and potential benefit of a full cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) work-up for assessing the location of scarred myocardium and the...     

Mitral prolapsing volume is associated with increased cardiac dimensions in patients with mitral annular disjunction

Netherlands Heart Journal - In patients with mitral annular disjunction (MAD), it can be difficult to assess the severity of mitral regurgitation (MR), as they present with a prolapsing...     

Long noncoding RNA HNF1A‐AS1 regulates proliferation and apoptosis of glioma through activation of the JNK signaling pathway via miR‐363‐3p/MAP2K4

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been proven to exert important functions in the various biological processes of human cancers. It has been reported that lncRNA HNF1 homeobox A antisense RNA 1 (HNF1A‐AS1) was abnormally expressed and played a role in the initiation and development of various human cancers. In this study, we confirmed that the expression level of HNF1A‐AS1 was increased in glioma tissues and cells. Knockdown of HNF1A‐AS1 inhibited cell proliferation and promoted cell apoptosis in glioma. Then, we disclosed the downregulation of miR‐363‐3p in glioma tissues and cell lines. The interaction between HNF1A‐AS1 and miR‐363‐3p was identified in glioma cells. Furthermore, an inverse correlation between HNF1A‐AS1 and miR‐363‐3p was observed in glioma tissues. Afterwards, we recognized that MAP2K4 was a direct target of miR‐363‐3p. The expression of MAP2K4 was negatively correlated with miR‐363‐3p while positively related to HNF1A‐AS1 in glioma tissues. We also found the regulatory effect of HNF1A‐AS1 on the MAP2K4‐dependent JNK signaling pathway. All findings indicated that HNF1A‐AS1 induces the upregulation of MAP2K4 to activate the JNK signaling pathway to promote glioma cell growth by acting as a miR‐363‐3p sponge.     

Safety and efficacy of stenting for aortic arch hypoplasia in patients with coarctation of the aorta

Netherlands Heart Journal - Despite a successful repair procedure for coarctation of the aorta (CoA), up to two-thirds of patients remain hypertensive. CoA is often seen in combination...     

Predictors of postoperative cardiovascular complications up to 3 months after kidney transplantation

Netherlands Heart Journal - Renal transplant patients have a high peri-operative risk for cardiovascular events. Pre-operative screening for cardiac ischaemia might lower this risk, but...     

FRASystem: fault tolerant system using agents in distributed computing systems

In this paper, we present a fault tolerant and recovery system called FRASystem (Fault Tolerant & Recovery Agent System) using multi-agent in distributed computing systems. Previous rollback-recovery protocols were dependent on an inherent communication and an underlying operating system, which caused a decline of computing performance. We propose a rollback-recovery protocol that works independently on an operating system and leads to an increasing portability and extensibility. We define four types of agents: (1) a recovery agent performs a rollback-recovery protocol after a failure, (2) an information agent constructs domain knowledge as a rule of fault tolerance and information during a failure-free operation, (3) a facilitator agent controls the communication between agents, (4) a garbage collection agent performs garbage collection of the useless fault tolerance information. Since agent failures may lead to inconsistent states of a system and a domino effect, we propose an agent recovery algorithm. A garbage collection protocol addresses the performance degradation caused by the increment of saved fault tolerance information in a stable storage. We implemented a prototype of FRASystem using Java and CORBA and experimented the proposed rollback-recovery protocol. The simulations results indicate that the performance of our protocol is better than previous rollback-recovery protocols which use independent checkpointing and pessimistic message logging without using agents. Our contributions are as follows: (1) this is the first rollback-recovery protocol using agents, (2) FRASystem is not dependent on an operating system, and (3) FRASystem provides a portability and extensibility.     

Subtractive Proteomics and Immuno-informatics Approaches for Multi-peptide Vaccine Prediction Against Klebsiella oxytoca and Validation Through In Silico Expression

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - Klebsiella oxytoca is a gram-negative bacterium. It is opportunistic in nature and causes hospital acquired infections....     

Extra energy for hearts with a genetic defect: ENERGY trial

Netherlands Heart Journal - Previous studies have shown that hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutation carriers have a decreased myocardial energy efficiency, which is thought to play...     

Genetische Ursachen und Therapie beim Alport-Syndrom

medizinische genetik - Bei der Typ IV Kollagen-Erkrankung Alport-Syndrom (AS) handelt es sich um eine progressive hereditäre Nephropathie. Klinische Zeichen sind zunächst...     

The Netherlands Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy Registry: design and status update

Background

Clinical research on arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is typically limited by small patient numbers, retrospective study designs, and inconsistent definitions.

Aim

To create a large national ACM patient cohort with a vast amount of uniformly collected high-quality data that is readily available for future research.

Methods

This is a multicentre, longitudinal, observational cohort study that includes (1) patients with a definite ACM diagnosis, (2) at-risk relatives of ACM patients, and (3) ACM-associated mutation carriers. At baseline and every follow-up visit, a medical history as well information regarding (non-)invasive tests is collected (e. g. electrocardiograms, Holter recordings, imaging and electrophysiological studies, pathology reports, etc.). Outcome data include (non-)sustained ventricular and atrial arrhythmias, heart failure, and (cardiac) death. Data are collected on a research electronic data capture (REDCap) platform in which every participating centre has its own restricted data access group, thus empowering local studies while facilitating data sharing.

Discussion

The Netherlands ACM Registry is a national observational cohort study of ACM patients and relatives. Prospective and retrospective data are obtained at multiple time points, enabling both cross-sectional and longitudinal research in a hypothesis-generating approach that extends beyond one specific research question. In so doing, this registry aims to (1) increase the scientific knowledge base on disease mechanisms, genetics, and novel diagnostic and treatment strategies of ACM; and (2) provide education for physicians and patients concerning ACM, e. g. through our website (www.acmregistry.nl) and patient conferences.