Exosomes and miRNAs in Cardiovascular Diseases and Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve Replacement: Advancements, Gaps and Perspectives.

As an important carrier of intercellular information transmission, exosomes regulate the physiological and pathological state of local or distant cells by carrying a variety of signal molecules such as microRNAs (miRNAs). Current research indicates that exosomes and miRNAs can serve as biomarkers and therapeutic targets for a variety of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). This narrative review summarizes the research progress of exosomes and their miRNAs in CVDs, particularly in pulmonary valve diseases (PVDs), and, for the first time, explores their potential associations with transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement (TPVR).

Postoperative systemic arterial hypertension in infants with congenital heart diseases: prevalence and risk factors.

Objective: To determine the prevalence rate and risk factors for systemic arterial hypertension in infants with congenital heart diseases.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study of postoperative systemic arterial hypertension incidence in infants who underwent cardiac surgery was conducted. The primary diagnosis was retrieved.

Major adverse cardiovascular events after modified morrow surgery in hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy: A 12-year cohort study.

Objective: This study investigates the incidence and risk factors for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) undergoing modified Morrow surgery. It also aims to develop a predictive model for MACE to improve clinical risk assessment.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study included 292 HOCM patients who underwent modified Morrow surgery.

Outcomes of Rehabilitation Strategies for Pulmonary Atresia with Ventricular Septal Defect: A Single Center's Experience.

Background: Both systemic-to-pulmonary shunt and right ventricle-pulmonary artery (RV-PA) connection are extensively applied to initially rehabilitate the pulmonary artery in pulmonary atresia with the ventricle septal defect (PA/VSD). However, which of these options is the most ideal for promoting pulmonary artery development and improving outcomes remains controversial.

Methods: A total of 109 PA/VSD patients undergoing initial rehabilitative surgery at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital from 2010 to 2020 were enrolled in this study.

Ventricular Morphology and Outcomes in Fontan Circulation without Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: A Single-Center's Experience.

Background: The impact of dominant ventricular morphology on Fontan patient outcomes remain controversial. This study evaluates long-term results of right ventricle (RV) dominance versus left ventricle (LV) dominance in Fontan circulation without hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS).

Methods: We retrospectively examined 323 Fontan operations from our center.

Long-term outcomes of pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect by different initial rehabilitative surgical age.

Background: There is a lack of evidence guiding the surgical timing selection in pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect. This study aims to compare the long-term outcomes of different initial rehabilitative surgical ages in patients with pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect (PAVSD).

Methods: From January 2011 to December 2020, a total of 101 PAVSD patients undergoing the initial rehabilitative surgery at our center were retrospectively reviewed.

A clinically applicable AI system for diagnosis of congenital heart diseases based on computed tomography images.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common type of birth defect. Without timely detection and treatment, approximately one-third of children with CHD would die in the infant period. However, due to the complicated heart structures, early diagnosis of CHD and its types is quite challenging, even for experienced radiologists.

Graph matching and deep neural networks based whole heart and great vessel segmentation in congenital heart disease.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of mortality among birth defects, and due to significant variations in the whole heart and great vessel, automatic CHD segmentation using CT images has been always under-researched. Even though some segmentation algorithms have been developed in the literature, none perform very well under the complex structure of CHD. To deal with the challenges, we take advantage of deep learning in processing regular structures and graph algorithms in dealing with large variations and propose a framework combining both the whole heart and great vessel segmentation in complex CHD.

Epidemiological characteristics and trends in postoperative death in children with congenital heart disease (CHD): a single-center retrospective study from 2005 to 2020.

Objectives: To analyze the epidemiological characteristics and trends in death after thoracotomy in children with congenital heart disease (CHD).

Methods: The clinical data of children with CHD aged 0-14 years who died after thoracotomy in our hospital from January 1, 2005, to December 31, 2020, were retrospectively collected to analyze the characteristics of and trends in postoperative death.

Results: A total of 502 patients (365 males; 72.

In Vivo Dissection of Chamber-Selective Enhancers Reveals Estrogen-Related Receptor as a Regulator of Ventricular Cardiomyocyte Identity.

Background: Cardiac chamber-selective transcriptional programs underpin the structural and functional differences between atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes (aCMs and vCMs). The mechanisms responsible for these chamber-selective transcriptional programs remain largely undefined.

Methods: We nominated candidate chamber-selective enhancers (CSEs) by determining the genome-wide occupancy of 7 key cardiac transcription factors (GATA4, MEF2A, MEF2C, NKX2-5, SRF, TBX5, TEAD1) and transcriptional coactivator P300 in atria and ventricles.

Tissue-specific metabolomic profiling after cardiopulmonary bypass in fetal sheep.

Objective: Fetal cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) is essential to fetal heart surgery, while its development is limited by vital organ dysfunction after CPB. Studying organ metabolism may help to solve this problem. The objective of this study was to describe the tissue-specific metabolic fingerprints of fetal sheep under CPB and to associate them with organ functions.

Case report: Total thoracoscopic repair of sinus of Valsalva aneurysm combined with ventricular septal defect.

The sinus of Valsalva aneurysm (SVA) is a rare cardiac anomaly. It can develop into the heart failure if it ruptures, which requires early intervention. However, such congenital anomalies are usually treated using a median sternotomy approach.

Mitral Valve Replacement Adopting Chimney Technique in Mitral Insufficiency And Extensive Mitral Annular Calcification: A Case Report.

Extensive and serious mitral annular calcification represents a troublesome obstacle in intracardiac mitral valve replacement due to time-consuming requirements and the potential of decalcification-associated complications. We report the case of a high-risk patient with extremely severe mitral insufficiency and difficult-to-debride annular calcification who received mitral replacement using a chimney technique. This approach enabled not only the minimization of mitral calcification debridement but also the reduction of surgery time.

Thoracoscopic trans-mitral myectomy for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy: a retrospective single-centre study.

Objectives: Transaortic myectomy is a common procedure for patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. Thoracoscopic trans-mitral myectomy has been described in a few small-sample studies and has been recommended as preferable. We herein report our clinical outcomes using the thoracoscopic trans-mitral approach with 76 patients.

Complications and management of functional single ventricle patients with Fontan circulation: From surgeon's point of view.

Fontan surgery by step-wise completing the isolation of originally mixed pulmonary and systemic circulation provides an operative approach for functional single-ventricle patients not amenable to biventricular repair and allows their survival into adulthood. In the absence of a subpulmonic pumping chamber, however, the unphysiological Fontan circulation consequently results in diminished cardiac output and elevated central venous pressure, in which multiple short-term or long-term complications may develop. Current understanding of the Fontan-associated complications, particularly toward etiology and pathophysiology, is extremely incomplete.

Primeval outcomes of thoracoscopic transmitral myectomy with anterior mitral leaflet extension for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy.

Background: The transaortic Morrow procedure is the current gold standard for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) patients who are resistant to maximum drug therapy. It is controversial whether concomitant mitral valve intervention is necessary. Only a few centers apply for concomitant anterior mitral leaflet extension with a bovine or autologous pericardial patch to further decrease systolic anterior motion.

Myocardial Segmentation of Cardiac MRI Sequences With Temporal Consistency for Coronary Artery Disease Diagnosis.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common cause of death globally, and its diagnosis is usually based on manual myocardial (MYO) segmentation of MRI sequences. As manual segmentation is tedious, time-consuming, and with low replicability, automatic MYO segmentation using machine learning techniques has been widely explored recently. However, almost all the existing methods treat the input MRI sequences independently, which fails to capture the temporal information between sequences, e.

Fine mapping KT1 on wheat chromosome 5A that conditions kernel dimensions and grain weight.

KT1 was validated as a novel thickness QTL with major effects on wheat kernel dimensions and weight and fine mapped to a 0.04 cM interval near the chromosome-5A centromere. Kernel size, the principal grain weight determining factor of wheat and a target trait for both domestication and artificial breeding, is mainly defined by kernel length (KL), kernel width (KW) and kernel thickness (KT), of which KW and KT have been shown to be positively related to grain weight (GW).

Pyramid-Net: Intra-layer Pyramid-Scale Feature Aggregation Network for Retinal Vessel Segmentation.

Retinal vessel segmentation plays an important role in the diagnosis of eye-related diseases and biomarkers discovery. Existing works perform multi-scale feature aggregation in an inter-layer manner, namely . However, such an approach only fuses features at either a lower scale or a higher scale, which may result in a limited segmentation performance, especially on thin vessels.

ImageTBAD: A 3D Computed Tomography Angiography Image Dataset for Automatic Segmentation of Type-B Aortic Dissection.

Type-B Aortic Dissection (TBAD) is one of the most serious cardiovascular events characterized by a growing yearly incidence, and the severity of disease prognosis. Currently, computed tomography angiography (CTA) has been widely adopted for the diagnosis and prognosis of TBAD. Accurate segmentation of true lumen (TL), false lumen (FL), and false lumen thrombus (FLT) in CTA are crucial for the precise quantification of anatomical features.

Improved Retinal Microcirculation After Cardiac Surgery in Patients With Congenital Heart Disease.

Microcirculatory changes in congenital heart disease (CHD) patients undergoing cardiac surgery are not fully understood. We aimed to investigate the changes of retinal microcirculation in CHD patients after cardiac surgery by optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) and explore the association between retinal microcirculation and surgical outcome. This prospective observational study consisted of 71 CHD patients aged ≥6 years undergoing cardiac surgery including 19 cyanotic CHD (CCHD) and 52 acyanotic CHD (ACHD).

The Hemodynamics of Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Patients after Central Shunt Operation.

A central shunt (CS) was an important surgery of systemic-to-pulmonary shunt (SPS) for the treatment of complex congenital heart diseases with decreased pulmonary blood flow (CCHDs-DPBF). There was no clear conclusion on how to deal with unclosed patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) during CS surgery. This study expanded the knowledge base on PDA by exploring the influence of the closing process of the PDA on the hemodynamic parameters for the CS model.

regulates pathological cardiac hypertrophy via a β-catenin-dependent mechanism.

Wnt/β-catenin signaling plays a key role in pathological cardiac remodeling in adults. The identification of a tissue-specific Wnt/β-catenin interaction factor may provide a tissue-specific clinical targeting strategy. encodes the core interaction factor of Wnt/β-catenin.