Personalizing Heart Failure Care to the Patient With Cancer.

Purpose Of Review: The current review describes the role of the cardio-oncology nurse and the need for personalized heart failure care for the patient with cancer.

Recent Findings: It is a new role whereby cardiology or heart failure nurses care for patients with cancer who develop cardiotoxicity or cardiovascular diseases, either during the cancer therapy or in a later stage. Inter-disciplinary approach is important for individualized early treatment, shortened interruptions to cancer therapy, and irreversible cardiovascular injury prevention.

Association between ethnicity and degree of improvement in cardiac function following initiation of sacubitril/valsartan.

Aims: The aim of this study was to determine the degree of short-term improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), haemodynamics, NT-proBNP and quality of life following initiation of sacubitril/valsartan in black patients when compared with white patients.

Methods: This was a retrospective, observational, single-centre, hypothesis-generating study of patients with symptomatic heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) treated with guideline recommended therapy, who were transitioned from an ACE inhibitor (ACE-I) or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) to sacubitril/valsartan.

Results: Our analysis included 83 patients (mean age 57 years) with echocardiography performed before and after transition from ACE-I/ARB to sacubitril/valsartan, after excluding patients with concomitant Cardiac resynchronization therapy implantation.

Biologic Variability of Soluble ST2 in Patients With Stable Chronic Heart Failure and Implications for Monitoring.

Soluble ST2 (sST2) is a novel biomarker implicated in myocardial remodeling and fibrosis. Recent studies in normal subjects have suggested that the biologic variability (BV) of sST2 is significantly lower than that of the B-type natriuretic peptides and N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP). It may, consequently, be a better biomarker for monitoring patients with chronic heart failure (CHF).