Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump: Overall and Temporal Trends of Comparative Effectiveness in a National Registry.

Background: Although the latest studies failed to prove the benefit of routine intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) use in patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) presenting with cardiogenic shock, the benefit of IABP utilization in selected cases in "real world" practice is unknown.

Aims: We sought to follow temporal trends in IABP use in a real-world cohort of acute coronary syndrome (ACS).

Methods: We evaluated IABP utilization and patient outcomes from the Acute Coronary Syndrome in Israel Survey (ACSIS) between the years 2000 and 2021.

Equity and length of lifespan are not the same.

Efforts to understand the dramatic declines in mortality over the past century have focused on life expectancy. However, understanding changes in disparity in age of death is important to understanding mechanisms of mortality improvement and devising policy to promote health equity. We derive a novel decomposition of variance in age of death, a measure of inequality, and apply it to cause-specific contributions to the change in variance among the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) from 1950 to 2010.

Efficacy and Safety of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation in Aortic Stenosis Patients With Extreme Age.

Objectives: To investigate the in-hospital and long-term outcomes of patients at extreme age with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis (AS) who underwent transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI).

Methods: A total of 276 consecutive patients with a mean age of 82.2 ± 5.

Clopidogrel response up to six months after acute myocardial infarction.

High on-treatment platelet reactivity (HTPR) despite clopidogrel therapy is associated with adverse cardiac events after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Most studies to date have assessed clopidogrel response at a single time point before or after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). It is unclear, however, whether the HTPR phenotype is stable over time.

Circulating endothelial progenitor cells in patients with dysfunctional versus normally functioning congenitally bicuspid aortic valves.

Patients with bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) may gradually develop significant valve dysfunction, whereas others remain free of dysfunction. Factors that determine the prognosis of BAV remain unclear. Because endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have a role in the repair of endothelial surfaces after injury, we hypothesized that EPCs may also be involved in preventing BAV degeneration.

Circulating endothelial progenitor cell levels and function in patients who experienced late coronary stent thrombosis.

Aims: The pathogenesis of late coronary stent thrombosis may be related to impaired arterial healing. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have been shown to play an important role in repair and re-endothelialization following vascular injury. We hypothesized that patients who develop late stent thrombosis may have reduced or dysfunctional EPCs, and aimed to compare EPC level and function in patients who experienced stent thrombosis vs.