Obesity in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction: Insights from the REDUCE LAP-HF II trial.

Aims: Obesity is causally related to the development of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) but complicates the diagnosis and treatment of this disorder. We aimed to determine the relationship between severity of obesity and clinical, echocardiographic and haemodynamic parameters in a large cohort of patients with documented HFpEF.

Methods And Results: The REDUCE LAP-HF II trial randomized 626 patients with ejection fraction ≥40% and exercise pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP) ≥25 mmHg to atrial shunt or sham procedure.

Impact of Left Ventricular Assist Devices on Days Alive and Out of Hospital in Hemodynamically Stable Patients with End-Stage Heart Failure: A Propensity Score Matched Study.

The two main surgical options to treat end-stage heart failure are heart transplantation (HTx) or left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implantation. In hemodynamically stable patients, the decision for HTx listing with or without LVADs is challenging. We analyzed the impact of both options on days alive and out of hospital (DAOH) and survival.

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance T2* mapping for the assessment of cardiovascular events in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Background: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is associated with an increased risk of adverse cardiac events. Beyond classic risk factors, relative myocardial ischaemia and succeeding myocardial alterations, which can be detected using either contrast agents or parametric mapping in cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging, have shown an impact on outcome in HCM. CMR may help to risk stratify using parametric T2* mapping.

Retrospective phase-based gating for cardiac proton spectroscopy with fixed scan time.

Background: Respiratory motion is a major limiting factor for spectral quality and duration of in vivo proton MR spectroscopy of the heart. Prospective navigator gating is frequently applied to minimize the effects of respiratory motion, but scan durations are subject-dependent and hence difficult to predict.

Purpose: To implement cardiac proton MRS with fixed scan time by employing retrospective phase-based gating and to compare the proposed method to conventional navigator-gated MRS.

Coronary Angiography With Pressure Wire and Fractional Flow Reserve.

Background: Approximately 800 000 coronary angiography procedures are per- formed in Germany each year, mainly in order to identify coronary artery stenoses. As a rule, revascularization is indicated only when coronary artery stenoses cause relevant ischemia, but this cannot be determined unequivocally by angiography alone. Pressure wire measurement and the measurement of fractional flow reserve (FFR) enable direct evaluation of the hemodynamic relevance of coronary artery stenoses during diagnostic coronary angiography.