Palliative care is specialized medical care focused on easing symptoms, addressing psychological and spiritual needs, and helping patients and caregivers make critical decisions aligned with their personal beliefs and values.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the heart could help to detect a life-threatening heart disease and enable clinicians to better predict which patients are most at risk, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers.

Shortly, 3D reconstructions of the hearts of dogs, pigs and sheep will be made, in addition to simulating their blood flow. These reconstructions will enable comparative studies of the hearts of these animals and of humans that can help better understand the formation of thrombi both in people and in animals.

The risk of death or complications from the stress-related heart condition associated with stressful events, such as the death of a loved one — called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome — was high and unchanged from 2016 to 2020, according to data from a national study that included nearly 200,000 U.S. adults.

Researchers at UCL and the Francis Crick Institute have, for the first time, identified the origin of cardiac cells using 3D images of a heart forming in real-time, inside a living mouse embryo.

Background: At this stage, the prognostic analysis of heart failure (HF) patients mainly focused on death and 30-day readmission, and fewer studies focused on 90-day readmission. Therefore, this study was to explore the risk factors for 90-day readmission in HF patients.

Methods: Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was used to perform variable screening. Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors of 90-day readmission of patients with HF. Logistic classification, eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) regression, and random forest were used to rank the influencing factors, and the Wayne diagram extracted the common factors of the top five influencing factors obtained by the three methods. Trend regression analysis and restricted cubic spline analysis were used to analyze the correlation between these factors and the 90-day readmission of patients with HF.

Results: Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), red blood cell count (RBC), red cell distribution width (RDW), and age were the main factors influencing the 90-day readmission of patients with HF. With the increase of CCI, the risk of 90-day readmission for patients with HF increased, the same results were found in RDW and age, while with the increase of RBC value, the risk of 90-day readmission decreased. RBC and RDW were linearly correlated with the 90-day readmission of patients with HF, while CCI and age were nonlinearly correlated with the 90-day readmission of patients with HF.

Conclusions: CCI, RBC, RDW, and age were the main factors influencing the 90-day readmission of patients with HF. RBC and RDW were linearly correlated with the 90-day readmission of patients with HF, while CCI and age were nonlinearly correlated with the 90-day readmission of patients with HF.

Keywords: 90-day readmission; heart failure (HF); risk factors

Experts at the University of Sydney are urging people, especially those with existing heart or vascular conditions, to seek medical advice before attempting to lose weight using water-only fasting diets. 

Background: Renal function is a crucial factor affecting the prognosis of patients with end-stage heart failure (HF). The differential impacts of heart transplantation and left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implantation on renal function are unclear. Therefore, we compared the perioperative renal function changes in patients who underwent heart transplantation with that of patients who underwent LVAD implantation.

Methods: This study included 77 patients who underwent heart transplantation and 59 patients who underwent LVAD implantation at five hospitals between January 2019 and December 2023. These patients were divided into two groups based on surgery type: heart transplantation or LVAD implantation. The estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFRs) before surgery and on postoperative days (PODs) 1, 7, and 30 were compared. A subgroup analysis was conducted for patients with preoperative renal dysfunction, and paired-samples t-tests were used to compare renal function changes before and one month after surgery.

Results: Patients in the LVAD group were older (56.4 vs. 44.4 years, P<0.001) and had lower preoperative eGFRs (72.5 vs. 91.3 mL/min/1.73 m², P=0.001) than patients in the heart transplantation group did. On POD 1 and POD 7, the LVAD group continued to have a lower eGFR than the heart transplantation group. The baseline eGFRs were not significantly different (63.3 vs. 60.4 mL/min/1.73 m², P=0.44) in patients with preoperative renal dysfunction (eGFR <90 mL/min/1.73 m²). However, on PODs 1, 7, and 30, the eGFR in the LVAD group was significantly greater than that in the heart transplantation group. By POD 30, renal function in the LVAD group had recovered to near-normal levels (60.4–87.6 mL/min/1.73 m²), whereas in the heart transplantation group, the eGFR remained close to the preoperative level (63.3–63.4 mL/min/1.73 m²). In the LVAD group, the eGFR significantly increased on POD 30, with 84.7% (50/59) of the LVAD patients showing varying degrees of improvement in renal function. In the heart transplantation group, patients’ eGFRs on POD 30 were comparable to their preoperative values, with more than half of them showing a decreased eGFR. Among the patients with preoperative renal dysfunction, 10 without a history of preoperative continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) underwent postoperative CRRT in the heart transplantation group; nine of them died within three months of transplantation. In the LVAD group, three patients without preoperative CRRT support required CRRT postoperatively, with one case of early mortality.

Conclusions: For patients with end-stage HF and concurrent renal dysfunction, compared to heart transplantation, LVAD implantation with this new device resulted in significantly improved renal function. With no malfunctions, the device operated in a safe and effective manner and was successfully managed to improve renal function.

Keywords: Left ventricular assist device (LVAD); heart transplantation; renal function; end-stage heart failure (end-stage HF)