Publications by authors named "Ramon Riojas"

The recommendation to employ a heart team to guide revascularization has persisted for over a decade. Despite evidence for improved adherence to guidelines, widespread adoption of the heart team approach has been limited. This review delves into the history of the guidelines endorsing the use of a heart team and the supporting data.

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Objective: Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), previously reserved for patients of intermediate to prohibitive surgical risk, has now been expanded to patients of any surgical risk with severe aortic stenosis. Bioprostheses are prone to structural valve degeneration (SVD), a progressive and multifactorial process that limits valve durability. As the population undergoing TAVR shifts toward a lower-risk and younger profile, long-term durability is a crucial determinant for patient outcomes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Precision medicine should consider social, cultural, and environmental factors to enhance health outcomes, as race impacts these dimensions beyond genetics.
  • The study examines how race, often linked to socioeconomic factors, affects patient outcomes in diagnosing and treating Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).
  • Findings from the University of California San Francisco Medical Centers showed no racial discrepancies in CAD treatment, leading to new research opportunities in this area.
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The development of an ontology facilitates the organization of the variety of concepts used to describe different terms in different resources. The proposed ontology will facilitate the study of cardiothoracic surgical education and data analytics in electronic medical records (EMR) with the standard vocabulary.

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Up to 28% of patients may need mitral valve (MV) surgery after transcatheter edge-to-edge repair (TEER). This study evaluates the outcomes of minimally invasive MV surgery after TEER. International multicenter registry of minimally invasive MV surgery after TEER between 2013 and 2020.

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Acute exercise induced compartment syndrome is a rare clinical diagnosis with serious long-term ramifications if not diagnosed in a timely fashion. We present a case of acute exercise induced compartment syndrome of the right lower extremity in a 22-year-old active-duty man that occurred during a physical fitness assessment. He was treated with a two incision four compartment fasciotomy, however required debridement of muscle from the anterior compartment on subsequent washouts of the wound that led to significant foot drop postoperatively.

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This manuscript aims to determine if there is a difference in performance outcomes after initial training with either animals or simulators. Volunteers without prior experience performing emergency procedures were randomly assigned to receive training in cricothyroidotomy on either a pig model or on an artificial simulator. Volunteers were given identical lectures and trained to proficiency.

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The objective of this study is to compare post-training self-efficacy between artificial simulators and live animal training for the performance of emergency medical procedures. Volunteer airmen of the 81st Medical Group, without prior medical procedure training, were randomly assigned to two experimental arms consisting of identical lectures and training of diagnostic peritoneal lavage, thoracostomy (chest tube), and cricothyroidotomy on either the TraumaMan (Simulab Corp., Seattle, Washington) artificial simulator or a live pig (Sus scrofa domestica) model.

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APPL1 is an adaptor protein that plays a critical role in regulating adiponectin and insulin signaling. However, how APPL1 is regulated under normal and pathological conditions remains largely unknown. In this study, we show that APPL1 undergoes phosphorylation at Ser(430) and that this phosphorylation is enhanced in the liver of obese mice displaying insulin resistance.

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Spontaneous pneumothorax is a commonly encountered problem in the Emergency Department. Patients are often treated without further investigation for an underlying etiology. We present a patient who was unable to completely resolve a pneumothorax and was found to have lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare cystic lung disease.

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Patellar tendon rupture is a rare occurrence usually associated with chronic degeneration within the tendon, systemic illness, and fluoroquinolone therapy as mentioned previously. However in healthy adults, overweight men in their 3rd or 4th decade of life may be at increased risk when partaking in athletic activities, especially jumping activities. Patella alta is a key finding on physical exam and on radiographs as was evident in our case.

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Clinical, epidemiological, and biochemical studies have highlighted the role of obesity-induced insulin resistance in various metabolic diseases. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain to be established. In the present study, we show that palmitate-induced serine phosphorylation of phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1 (PDK1) negatively regulates insulin signaling.

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3-Phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1 (PDK1) mediates phosphorylation and activation of members of the AGC protein kinase family and plays an essential role in insulin signaling and action. However, whether and how PDK1 activity is regulated in cells remains largely uncharacterized. In the present study, we show that PDK1 undergoes insulin-stimulated and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-dependent phosphorylation at Ser244 in the activation loop and at a novel site: Ser163 in the hinge region between the two lobes of the kinase domain.

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Adiponectin, also known as Acrp30, is an adipose tissue-derived hormone with anti-atherogenic, anti-diabetic and insulin sensitizing properties. Two seven-transmembrane domain-containing proteins, AdipoR1 and AdipoR2, have recently been identified as adiponectin receptors, yet signalling events downstream of these receptors remain poorly defined. By using the cytoplasmic domain of AdipoR1 as bait, we screened a yeast two-hybrid cDNA library derived from human fetal brain.

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