Explore the vast range of titles available.

AimsThe first reports of declining hospital admissions for major cardiovascular emergencies during the COVID-19 pandemic attracted public attention. However, systematic evidence on this subject is sparse. We aimed to investigate the rate of emergent hospital admissions, subsequent invasive treatments and comorbidities during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.Methods and resultsThis was a retrospective analysis of health insurance claims data from the second largest insurance fund in Germany, BARMER. Patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, acute limb ischemia, aortic rupture, stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) between January 1, 2019, and May 31, 2020, were included. Admission rates per 100,000 insured, invasive treatments and comorbidities were compared from January–May 2019 (pre-COVID) to January–May 2020 (COVID). A total of 115,720 hospitalizations were included in the current analysis (51.3% females, mean age 72.9 years). Monthly admission rates declined from 78.6/100,000 insured (pre-COVID) to 70.6/100,000 (COVID). The lowest admission rate was observed in April 2020 (61.6/100,000). Administration rates for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (7.3–6.6), non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (16.8–14.6), acute limb ischemia (5.1–4.6), stroke (35.0–32.5) and TIA (13.7–11.9) decreased from pre-COVID to COVID. Baseline comorbidities and the percentage of these patients treated with interventional or open-surgical procedures remained similar over time across all entities. In-hospital mortality in hospitalizations for stroke increased from pre-COVID to COVID (8.5–9.8%).ConclusionsAdmission rates for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular emergencies declined during the pandemic in Germany, while patients’ comorbidities and treatment allocations remained unchanged. Further investigation is warranted to identify underlying reasons and potential implications on patients’ outcomes.Graphic abstract

Background Venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) is increasingly used in patients with critical cardiopulmonary failure. To investigate the association between hospital VA-ECMO procedure volume and outcomes in a large, nationwide registry. Methods By using administrative data from the German Federal Health Monitoring System, we analyzed all VA-ECMO procedures performed in Germany from 2013 to 2016 regarding the association of procedural volumes with outcomes and complications. Results During the study period, 10,207 VA-ECMO procedures were performed; mean age was 61 years, 43.4% had prior CPR, and 71.2% were male patients. Acute coronary syndrome was the primary diagnosis for VA-ECMO implantation ( n  = 6202, 60.8%). The majority of implantations ( n  = 5421) were performed at hospitals in the lowest volume category (≤ 50 implantations per year). There was a significant association between annualized volume of VA-ECMO procedures and 30-day in-hospital mortality for centers with lower vs. higher volume per year. Multivariable logistic regression showed an increased 30-day in-hospital mortality at hospitals with the lowest volume category (adjusted odds ratio 1.13, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01–1.27, p  = 0.034). Similarly, higher likelihood for complications was observed at hospitals with lower vs. higher annual VA-ECMO volume (adjusted odds ratio 1.46, 95% CI 1.29–1.66, p  = 0.001). Conclusions In this analysis of more than 10,000 VA-ECMO procedures for cardiogenic shock, the majority of implantations were performed at hospitals with the lowest annual volume. Thirty-day in-hospital mortality and likelihood for complications were higher at hospitals with the lowest annual VA-ECMO volume.

Aim The management of cardiogenic shock remains a clinical challenge even in well‐developed healthcare systems, best illustrated by its high mortality despite numerous innovative proposals for management. The aim of this study was to describe temporal trends in incidence, causes, use of mechanical circulatory support, and mortality in cardiogenic shock in Germany. Methods and results Data on all cardiogenic shock patients treated in German hospitals between 2005 and 2017 were obtained from the Federal Bureau of Statistics. The data set comprised 441 696 patients with cardiogenic shock, mean age 71 (±13.8) years, 171 383 (39%) female patients. Incidence rates increased from 33.1/100 000 population in 2005 (27 246 cases) to 51.7/100 000 population in 2017 (42 779 cases). Acute myocardial infarction was the most common cause of cardiogenic shock in 2005–07 (43 422 of 82 037 cases, 52.9%), but the proportion of cases caused by it decreased until 2014–17 (73 274 of 165 873 cases, 44.2%). Over time, intra‐aortic balloon pump (2005: 5104; 2017: 973 cases) was used less frequently, whereas use of extracorporeal‐membrane‐oxygenation (2007: 35; 2017: 2414 cases) and percutaneous left ventricular assist devices (2005: 27; 2017: 1323 cases) increased. Mortality remained high at around 60% without relevant temporal trends in patients without acute myocardial infarction and slightly decreased in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Conclusions In this large, nation‐wide study, annual incidence of cardiogenic shock was growing, its causes were changing, and mortality was high despite a shift towards use of novel mechanical circulatory support devices. This highlights the need to address the evidence gap in this field, in particular for cardiogenic shock caused by diseases other than acute myocardial infarction.

Robotic-assisted percutaneous coronary interventions (rPCI) have proven feasible and safe while reducing radiation exposure for the operator. Recently, rPCI systems have been refined to facilitate the treatment of complex lesions. The aim of the current study was to evaluate challenges and opportunities of establishing an rPCI program at a tertiary referral center. rPCI was performed using the CorPath GRX Vascular Robotic System (Corindus Inc., a Siemens Healthineers Company, Waltham, USA). Baseline, procedural, and in-hospital follow-up data were prospectively assessed. rPCI success was defined as completion of the PCI without or with partial manual assistance. The safety endpoint was the composite of missing angiographic success or procedure-related adverse events during hospital stay. Overall, 86 coronary lesions were treated in 71 patients (28.2% female) from January to April 2021. Median age was 71.0 years (IQR 60.3; 79.8). Indications for rPCI were stable angina pectoris (71.8%), unstable angina (12.7%) and non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (15.5%). Most lesions were complex (type B2/C: 88.4%) and included 7 cases of rPCI for chronic total occlusions. Angiographic and rPCI success were achieved in 100.0% and 94.2%, respectively. Partial manual assistance was used in 25.6%. Conversion to manual PCI was required in 5.8%. The safety endpoint occurred in 7.0% of patients. rPCI when applied as clinical routine for complex coronary lesions is effective with good immediate angiographic and clinical results. Future investigations should focus on the identification of patients that particularly benefit from robotic-assisted vs. manual PCI despite higher resource utilization.

TAVI has become the standard treatment in patients at increased surgical risk and is increasingly being performed in patients at intermediate to low surgical risk. While non-inferiority has been demonstrated in intermediate risk patients, several challenges-particularly with regard to valve durability-need to be addressed before expansion to lower risk and younger patients can be recommended on a broad basis. Current trends, trials results, and remaining challenges are summarized and discussed in the light of updated treatment guidelines.

Cerebrovascular events remain a serious complication in patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation with an incidence of 2–3% at 30 days. While expanding TAVI to younger low-risk patients, prevention of periprocedural strokes becomes even more important. Different cerebral embolic protection devices have been tested but a clear clinical benefit has not been demonstrated in randomized trials. Due to the multifactorial aetiology with different predisposing factors, stroke prevention should include procedural and periprocedural strategies. This article aims to summarize different approaches and discuss open questions.

Federated learning is a renowned technique for utilizing decentralized data while preserving privacy. However, real-world applications often face challenges like partially labeled datasets, where only a few locations have certain expert annotations, leaving large portions of unlabeled data unused. Leveraging these could enhance transformer architectures’ ability in regimes with small and diversely annotated sets. We conduct the largest federated cardiac CT analysis to date ( n = 8, 104) in a real-world setting across eight hospitals. Our two-step semi-supervised strategy distills knowledge from task-specific CNNs into a transformer. First, CNNs predict on unlabeled data per label type and then the transformer learns from these predictions with label-specific heads. This improves predictive accuracy and enables simultaneous learning of all partial labels across the federation, and outperforms UNet-based models in generalizability on downstream tasks. Code and model weights are made openly available for leveraging future cardiac CT analysis.

BackgroundHeyde syndrome (HS) is known as the association of severe aortic stenosis (AS) and recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB) from angiodysplasia. Data on the prevalence of HS and results after TAVI remain scarce.Methods2548 consecutive patients who underwent TAVI for the treatment of AS from 2008 to 2017 were evaluated for a history of GIB and the presence of HS. The diagnosis of HS was defined as a clinical triad of severe AS, a history of recurrent GIB, and an endoscopic diagnosis of angiodysplasia. These patients (Heyde) were followed to investigate clinical outcomes, bleeding complications and the recurrence of GIB and were compared to patients with GIB unrelated to HS (Non-Heyde).ResultsA history of GIB prior to TAVI was detected in 190 patients (7.5%). Among them, 47 patients were diagnosed with HS (1.8%). Heyde patients required blood transfusions more frequently compared to Non-Heyde patients during index hospitalization (50.0% vs. 31.9%, p = 0.03). Recurrent GIB was detected in 39.8% of Heyde compared to 21.2% of Non-Heyde patients one year after TAVI (p = 0.03). In patients diagnosed with HS and recurrent GIB after TAVI, the rate of residual ≥ mild paravalvular leakage (PVL) was higher compared to those without recurrent bleeding (73.3% vs. 38.1%, p = 0.05).ConclusionA relevant number of patients undergoing TAVI were diagnosed with HS. Recurrent GIB was detected in a significant number of Heyde patients during follow-up. A possible association with residual PVL requires further investigation to improve treatment options and outcomes in patients with HS.Graphic abstract

BackgroundA small aortic annulus is associated with increased risk of prosthesis–patient mismatch (PPM) after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). Whether specific transcatheter heart valve (THV) designs yield superior hemodynamic performance in these small anatomies remains unclear.MethodsData from 8411 consecutive patients treated with TAVI from May 2012 to April 2019 at four German centers were retrospectively evaluated. A small aortic annulus was defined as multidetector computed tomography-derived annulus area < 400 mm2. TAVI was performed with a balloon-expanding intra-annular (Sapien-3, n = 288), self-expanding intra-annular (Portico, n = 110), self-expanding supra-annular (Evolut, n = 179 and Acurate-Neo, n = 428) and mechanically expanding infra-annular (Lotus, n = 64) THV according to local practice. PPM was defined as indexed effective orifice area ≤ 0.85cm2/m2.ResultsA small annulus was found in 1069 (12.7%) patients. PPM was detected in 38.3% overall with a higher prevalence after implantation of a balloon-expanding intra-annular or mechanically expanding infra-annular THV compared to self-expanding intra- and supra-annular THV. Multivariable analysis linked self-expanding THV (Evolut: Odds ratio [OR] 0.341, Acurate-Neo: OR 0.436, Portico: OR 0.291), postdilatation (OR 0.648) and age (OR 0.968) to lower rates of PPM, while aortic valve calcification was associated with an increased risk (OR 1.001). Paravalvular regurgitation > mild was more frequent after TAVI with self-expanding THV (p = 0.04).ConclusionIn this large contemporary multicenter patient population, a substantial number of patients with a small aortic anatomy were left with PPM after TAVI. Self-expanding supra- and intra-annular THV demonstrated superior hemodynamics in these patients at risk, however at the cost of higher rates of residual paravalvular regurgitation.Graphic abstract

The lowered LDL-C treatment goal of the 2019 European Society of Cardiology dyslipidemia guidelines results in a significant increase in the projected need for cost-intensive proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors. Addition of bempedoic acid (BA) to established oral lipid-lowering medication (LLM) has the potential to enable affordable LDL-C goal attainment, particularly in patients with statin intolerance (SI). The goal of this study was to quantify the target populations for BA and PCSK9 inhibitors as well as the related treatment costs to achieve the LDL-C goal of <55 mg/dL and a ≥50% reduction assuming the addition of BA to LLM. This study included 1922 patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) from the contemporary observational cohort study INTERCATH. A Monte Carlo simulation incorporating an algorithm adding sequentially a statin, ezetimibe, optionally BA, and a PCSK9 inhibitor was applied to achieve the LDL-C treatment goal, with consideration of both partial and total SI. Two scenarios were simulated for both a moderate (2% full and 10% partial) and a high (12% full) rate of SI: (1) without BA; and (2) with BA. Patients’ mean age was 69.3 years, and the median baseline LDL-C level was 86.0 mg/dL. The need for a PCSK9 inhibitor would be 41.4% for a moderate rate of SI and 46.1% for a high rate of SI. Addition of BA would: (1) reduce the need for a PCSK9 inhibitor to 25.3% and 29.4%, thus lowering the annual overall treatment cost incurred through PCSK9 inhibitor ± BA per 1 million patients with CAD by 13.3% and 10.5%; (2) lower the cost per prevented event in the entire cohort (–5.0% and –6.3%), although at the price of fewer prevented events (–8.7% and –4.5%); and (3) reduce the cost per prevented event (–6.8% for both rates of SI) while preventing more events (7.6% and 6.9%) in the subpopulation of patients with full SI. Use of BA is projected to reduce the need for PCSK9 inhibitors as well as the treatment cost for add-on LLM. The subpopulation of patients with full SI might profit particularly.