Building Blood Vessel Chips with Enhanced Physiological Relevance.

Blood vessel chips are bioengineered microdevices, consisting of biomaterials, human cells, and microstructures, which recapitulate essential vascular structure and physiology and allow a well-controlled microenvironment and spatial-temporal readouts. Blood vessel chips afford promising opportunities to understand molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying a range of vascular diseases. The physiological relevance is key to these blood vessel chips that rely on bioinspired strategies and bioengineering approaches to translate vascular physiology into artificial units.

Severe triple vessel disease secondary to IgG4-related coronary periarteritis.

Background: Immunoglobulin G4-related disease is a rare systemic inflammatory disease that can lead to vascular manifestations such as periarteritis.

Case Presentation: A 41-year-old man with stress angina was referred for coronary bypass surgery due to triple vessel coronary disease.

Conclusions: Operative findings revealed significant adhesions and dense peri-coronary and periaortic thickening, also involving the left internal mammary artery.

Venous thrombosis, thromboembolism, biomarkers of inflammation, and coagulation in coronavirus disease 2019.

Objective: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with abnormal inflammatory and coagulation markers, potentially mediating thrombotic events. Our objective was to investigate the incidence, time course, laboratory features, and in-hospital outcomes of COVID-19 patients with suspected venous thromboembolism (VTE).

Methods: A retrospective observational cohort study was conducted of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who had undergone ultrasound imaging for suspected VTE from March 13 to May 18, 2020.

Efficacy of spinal cord stimulation as an adjunct therapy for chronic refractory angina pectoris.

Introduction: Patients with chronic refractory angina whose symptoms are not controlled with conventional therapies have a poor quality of life. Adjunctive therapies, such as spinal cord stimulation (SCS) may be considered in these cases. We sought to examine whether SCS is associated with changes in exercise capacity and angina severity in these patients.