Left Ventricular Assist Device in Advanced Refractory Heart Failure: A Comprehensive Review of Patient Selection, Surgical Approaches, Complications and Future Perspectives.

The management of advanced heart failure (HF) has long posed significant challenges due to its complex and chronic nature. Heart transplantation, while effective, is not always feasible due to the limited availability of donor organs. In this context, long term mechanical circulatory support and mainly left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have emerged as a vital intervention to fill this gap.

Garlic and Hypertension: Efficacy, Mechanism of Action, and Clinical Implications.

Hypertension is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Garlic has a long history of use in traditional medicine for various conditions, including hypertension. This narrative review examined the scientific evidence on the efficacy of garlic in lowering blood pressure.

Social Determinants of Health and Biological Age among Diverse U.S. Adults, NHANES 2011-2018.

We examined the sex-specific association between education and income with biological age (BA) and by race/ethnicity. The Klemera-Doubal method was used to calculate BA among 6,213 females and 5,938 males aged 30-75 years who were Hispanic, non-Hispanic (NH) White, NH Black (NHB), or NH Asian (NHA). Compared with a college education, less than a high school education was associated with greater BA by 3.

A critique and examination of the polysocial risk score approach: predicting cognition in the Health and Retirement Study.

Polysocial risk scores were recently proposed as a strategy for improving the clinical relevance of knowledge about social determinants of health. Our objective in this study was to assess whether the polysocial risk score model improves prediction of cognition and all-cause mortality in middle-aged and older adults beyond simpler models including a smaller set of key social determinants of health. We used a sample of 13 773 individuals aged ≥50 years at baseline from the 2006-2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, a US population-based longitudinal cohort study.

History of Low Hourly Wage and All-Cause Mortality Among Middle-aged Workers.

Importance: Earning a low wage is an increasingly recognized public health concern, yet little research exists on the long-term health consequences of sustained low-wage earning.

Objective: To examine the association of sustained low-wage earning and mortality in a sample of workers with hourly wage reported biennially during peak midlife earning years.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This longitudinal study included 4002 US participants, aged 50 years or older, from 2 subcohorts of the Health and Retirement Study (1992-2018) who worked for pay and reported earning hourly wages at 3 or more time points during a 12-year period during their midlife (1992-2004 or 1998-2010).

Association of Low Hourly Wages in Middle Age With Faster Memory Decline in Older Age: Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study.

Little research has investigated the long-term relationship between low wages and memory decline, despite the growing share of low-wage workers in the US labor market. Here, we examined whether cumulative exposure to low wages over 12 years in midlife is associated with memory decline in later life. Using 1992-2016 data from the Health and Retirement Study, we analyzed data from 2,879 individuals born in 1936-1941 using confounder-adjusted linear mixed-effects models.

Awareness and attitudes towards advance care planning in primary care: role of demographic, socioeconomic and religiosity factors in a cross-sectional Lebanese study.

Objective: To assess awareness and attitudes towards engaging in advance care planning (ACP) and their relationship with demographic, socioeconomic and religiosity factors among Lebanese middle-aged to older-aged adults in primary care.

Design: A cross-sectional survey study.

Setting: Tertiary referral hospital in Beirut, Lebanon.

Work Hours and Cognitive Function: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.

Background: Cognitive impairment is a public health burden. Our objective was to investigate associations between work hours and cognitive function.

Methods: Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) participants ( = 2,497; 50.

A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Phase II Trial of Gemcitabine and Nab-Paclitaxel Plus Apatorsen or Placebo in Patients with Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer: The RAINIER Trial.

Lessons Learned: The addition of the heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27)-targeting antisense oligonucleotide, apatorsen, to a standard first-line chemotherapy regimen did not result in improved survival in unselected patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.Findings from this trial hint at the possible prognostic and predictive value of serum Hsp27 that may warrant further investigation.

Background: This randomized, double-blinded, phase II trial evaluated the efficacy of gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel plus either apatorsen, an antisense oligonucleotide targeting heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27) mRNA, or placebo in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Similar risks for hypothyroidism after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation using TBI-based myeloablative and reduced-intensity conditioning regimens.

The risk of hypothyroidism after reduced-intensity hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is not well known. We studied the incidence of hypothyroidism among a cohort of HCT recipients who had survived for > or =1 year and received a TBI-based myeloablative (MA) (N=84) or reduced-intensity (N=97) conditioning (RIC) regimen. MA HCT recipients were younger at the time of transplant (median age 37 vs 54 years, P<0.

Does the hematopoietic cell transplantation specific comorbidity index predict transplant outcomes? A validation study in a large cohort of umbilical cord blood and matched related donor transplants.

The hematopoietic cell transplantation specific comorbidity index (HCT-CI) has been recently proposed to predict the probability of nonrelapse mortality (NRM) and overall survival (OS) in allogeneic HCT recipients while taking into account any pretransplant comorbidity. We tested the validity of the HCT-CI in a cohort of 373 adult HCT recipients (184 matched-related donor and 189 unrelated umbilical cord blood) who received a myeloablative (N = 150) or nonmyeloablative (N = 223) conditioning regimen. HCT-CI scores of 0, 1, 2, and > or =3 were present in 58 (16%), 56 (15%), 64 (17%), and 195 (52%) patients, respectively.

Similar risks for chronic kidney disease in long-term survivors of myeloablative and reduced-intensity allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) in recipients of myeloablative (MA) allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) has been well characterized. However, the risk of CKD after HCT using reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC) is not well known. We compared the incidence of CKD by conditioning regimen in 221 allogeneic HCT recipients (MA = 117, RIC = 104) who had survived for >or=1 year post-HCT and had no history of CKD pretransplant.

The injury severity score or the new injury severity score for predicting mortality, intensive care unit admission and length of hospital stay: experience from a university hospital in a developing country.

Introduction: Limited research has been performed to compare the predictive abilities of the injury severity score (ISS) and the new ISS (NISS) in the developing world.

Patients And Methods: From January 2001 until January 2003 all trauma patients admitted to the American University of Beirut Medical Centre were enrolled. The statistical performance of the ISS/NISS in predicting mortality, admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) and length of hospital stay (LOS dichotomised as <10 or > or =10 days) was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic and the Hosmer-Lemeshow calibration statistic.