Serum Biomarkers to Dynamically Predict the Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Patients under Oncologic Therapy. A Multicenter Observational Study.

Background: Serum biomarkers have been investigated as predictive risk factors for cancer-related cardiovascular (CV) risk, but their analysis is limited to their baseline level rather than their overtime change. Besides historically validated causal factors, inflammatory and oxidative stress (OS) related markers seem to be correlated to CV events but this association needs to be further explored. We conducted an observational study to determine the predictive role of the longitudinal changes of commonly used and OS-related biomarkers during the cancer treatment period.

Association of Biomarkers with Serious Cardiac Adverse Events during Abiraterone Acetate Treatment in Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer.

Background: Abiraterone acetate is an effective drug for castration-resistant prostate cancer, but cardiac serious adverse events (SAEs) may occur. We studied their association with N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and troponin T (TnT) during abiraterone therapy.

Patients And Methods: In a single institution, 17 patients were treated with abiraterone acetate 1 g daily with concomitant prednisone and then switched to dexametasone plus canrenone.

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and prevention of sudden cardiac death in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Context: Recently, the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) has been promoted for prevention of sudden death in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). However, the effectiveness and appropriate selection of patients for this therapy is incompletely resolved.

Objective: To study the relationship between clinical risk profile and incidence and efficacy of ICD intervention in HCM.

Risk associated with pregnancy in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Objectives: We sought to assess mortality and morbidity in pregnant women with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Background: The risk associated with pregnancy in women with HCM is an important and increasingly frequent clinical issue for which systematic data are not available and a large measure of uncertainty persists.

Methods: Maternal mortality in 91 consecutively evaluated families with HCM was compared with that reported in the general population.

[Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and sudden death].

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a primary and usually familial cardiac disorder characterized by a genetic, pathophysiologic and clinical complexity. The natural history of the disease is extremely heterogenous: many patients have no or mild symptoms and a near-normal longevity, some develop severe symptoms of heart failure, and others die suddenly often at a young age and in the absence of previous symptoms. Although sudden and unexpected cardiac death may occur at any age in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, this devastating event is the most common modality of death in children and young patients.

Role of echocardiography in acute chest pain syndrome.

Fewer than one third of patients presenting to the emergency department with complaints of chest pain have an acute coronary syndrome. The electrocardiogram provides a specific diagnosis only in 40% of patients with acute myocardial infarction. The presence of regional wall-motion abnormalities at echocardiography in patients without known coronary artery disease is a moderate indicator of an increased likelihood of acute myocardial ischemia or myocardial infarction with a positive predictive accuracy of about 50%.

[From the great clinical studies to the management of the single patient. Medical therapy in the pre- and post-fibrinolytic era].

Medical therapy of myocardial infarction has changed over the last 30 years. The "lag phenomenon", i.e.

Multiplane transesophageal echocardiography and stroke.

Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is considered a basic tool in the diagnostic and follow-up evaluation of stroke patients, since up to 40% of cerebral ischemic events are presumed to have a cardiac origin. TEE offers a superior resolution of the posterior cardiac structures, such as left atrium and appendage and atrial septum, as well as of the aorta. By means of TEE, evidence has accumulated that some cardiovascular abnormalities (left-sided thrombi, tumors and vegetative lesions, complicated plaques of the aortic arch) are associated with ischemic stroke.