Metallic drug-eluting stents have led to significant improvements in clinical outcomes but are inherently limited by their caging of the vessel wall. Fully bioresorbable scaffolds (BRS) have emerged in an effort to overcome these limitations, allowing a “leave nothing behind” approach. Although theoretically appealing, the initial experience with BRS technology was limited by increased rates of scaffold thrombosis compared with contemporary stents. This review gives a broad outline of the current BRS technologies and outlines the refinements in BRS design, procedural approach, lesion selection, and post-procedural care that resulted from early BRS trials.
Metallic drug-eluting stents have led to significant improvements in clinical outcomes but are inherently limited by their caging of the vessel wall. Fully bioresorbable scaffolds (BRS) have emerged in an effort to overcome these limitations, allowing a “leave nothing behind” approach. Although theoretically appealing, the initial experience with BRS technology was limited by increased rates of scaffold thrombosis compared with contemporary stents. This review gives a broad outline of the current BRS technologies and outlines the refinements in BRS design, procedural approach, lesion selection, and post-procedural care that resulted from early BRS trials.
The world is facing an epidemic rise in diabetes mellitus (DM) incidence, which is challenging health funders, health systems, clinicians, and patients to understand and respond to a flood of research and knowledge. Evidence-based guidelines provide uniform management recommendations for “average” patients that rarely take into account individual variation in susceptibility to DM, to its complications, and responses to pharmacological and lifestyle interventions. Personalized medicine combines bioinformatics with genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, pharmacogenomic (“omics”) and other new technologies to explore pathophysiology and to characterize more precisely an individual’s risk for disease, as well as response to interventions. In this review we will introduce readers to personalized medicine as applied to DM, in particular the use of clinical, genetic, metabolic, and other markers of risk for DM and its chronic microvascular and macrovascular complications, as well as insights into variations in response to and tolerance of commonly used medications, dietary changes, and exercise. These advances in “omic” information and techniques also provide clues to potential pathophysiological mechanisms underlying DM and its complications.
The fetal “programming of adult diseases” has been previously reviewed. The descriptions were comprehensive, dealing with the effects of nutritional deprivation on the development of adult metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. During the past decade, research into this “programming” also expanded to the development of osteoporosis. The present review deals with the imbalance of bone mineral metabolism, “programmed” by maternal/fetal/infantile nutritional deprivation, and is illustrated with a family history from the Budapest Ghetto.
Despite its status as a world leader in treatment innovation and medical education, a quality chasm exists in American health care. Care fragmentation and poor coordination contribute to expensive care with highly variable quality in the United States. The rising costs of health care since 1990 have had a huge impact on individuals, families, businesses, the federal and state governments, and the national budget deficit. The passage of the Affordable Care Act represents a large shift in how health care is financed and delivered in the United States. The objective of this review is to describe some of the economic and social forces driving health care reform, provide an overview of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and review model cardiovascular quality improvement programs underway in the state of Michigan. As health care reorganization occurs at the federal level, local and regional efforts can serve as models to accelerate improvement toward achieving better population health and better care at lower cost. Model programs in Michigan have achieved this goal in cardiovascular care through the systematic application of evidence-based care, the utilization of regional quality improvement collaboratives, community-based childhood wellness promotion, and medical device-based competitive bidding strategies. These efforts are examples of the direction cardiovascular care delivery will need to move in this era of the Affordable Care Act.
Despite a preoccupation in the medical literature with developing an effective approach for breaking bad news, the sources are based on personal opinion alone and only in some instances on qualitative research. Recognizing the gravity of this topic coupled with respect for the wisdom of the written and oral Jewish scriptures, this work is an attempt to delve into the diverse ancient writings to draw conclusions regarding a recommended methodology to guide and inform this task.
It is interesting to learn that most elements related to this topic have previously been raised in various forms in the scriptures. The issues range from where, when, and how the bearer of bad news should undertake this duty, to details such as the environment, the format, the speed, and depth of the details to be disclosed. The essence of this paper is to enrich the reader using both positive and negative examples found in the Jewish heritage. Adopting these principles will hopefully provide an effective method for performing this unpleasant obligation, with the goal of limiting harmful consequences as much as possible.
Objective: To compare pathologic results obtained via in-office transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy (TFL) to those of subsequent direct laryngoscopy in order to assess the accuracy of TFL as a diagnostic tool.
Patients: One hundred and seventeen patients with suspicious laryngeal lesions.
Methods: All patients underwent in-office biopsies. All patients with malignant diagnosis were referred to treatment. All patients with benign diagnosis or carcinoma in situ were referred to direct laryngoscopy for definitive diagnosis. The pathological results of the specimens from both procedures were compared.
Results: Adequate tissue for diagnostic purposes was obtained in 110 of 117 in-office transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy biopsies (94.0%). The biopsy results revealed invasive carcinoma in 42 patients (38.2%), carcinoma in situ (CIS) in 17 patients (15.4%), and benign lesions in 51 patients (46.4%). All patients with benign pathologies and carcinoma in situ were referred to biopsy under direct laryngoscopy (five patients refused and were removed from the statistics). The final pathologies identified from the biopsies on direct laryngoscopy revealed that there was an underestimation of the transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy results in 33 patients (a false negative rate of 31.4%, 33/105) and an overestimation in one patient. The sensitivity of transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy biopsy compared with direct laryngoscopy biopsy was 70.6% and the specificity was 96.7%.
Conclusions: TFL with biopsy is easy, safe, and cost-effective but raises serious doubts about its clinical value due its low sensitivity rate for diagnosing suspicious lesions of the larynx. As such, it is recommended that all patients with a suspicious lesion diagnosed by TFL biopsy as being benign or CIS should be referred to direct laryngoscopy for verification of the findings.
The twentieth century witnessed profound changes in medical education. All these changes, however, took place within the existing framework, suggested by Flexner a century ago. The present paper suggests that we are approaching a singularity point, where we shall have to change the paradigm and be prepared for an entirely new genre of medical education. This suggestion is based upon analysis of existing and envisaged trends: first, in technology, such as availability of information and sophisticated simulations; second, in medical practice, such as far-reaching interventions in life and death that create an array of new moral dilemmas, as well as a change in patient mix in hospitals and a growing need of team work; third, in the societal attitude toward higher education. The structure of the future medical school is delineated in a rough sketch, and so are the roles of the future medical teacher. It is concluded that we are presently not prepared for the approaching changes, neither from practical nor from attitudinal points of view, and that it is now high time for both awareness of and preparation for these changes.
The Registro Informatizado de Enfermedad TromboEmbólica (RIETE Registry) is an ongoing, international, prospective registry of consecutive patients with acute venous thromboembolism (VTE) designed to gather and analyze data on treatment patterns and outcomes in patients with acute VTE. It started in Spain in 2001, and 6 years later the database was translated into English with the aim to expand the Registry to other countries. In contrast to randomized controlled trials, there is no imposed experimental intervention: the management is determined solely by physicians. Thus, it provides data on patients with VTE in a real-world situation with an unselected patient population. Data from RIETE are hypothesis-generating and provide feedback from real-world clinical situations. So far, we learned about the natural history of VTE in patients with relative or absolute contraindications to anticoagulant therapy. We also learned interesting aspects on the natural history of VTE, and we built a number of prognostic scores to identify VTE patients at low, moderate, or high risk for adverse outcome.
With the discovery of the JAK2V617F mutation in patients with Philadelphia chromosome-negative (Ph-) myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) in 2005, major advances have been made in the diagnosis of MPNs, in understanding of their pathogenesis involving the JAK/STAT pathway, and finally in the development of novel therapies targeting this pathway. Nevertheless, it remains unknown which mutations exist in approximately one-third of patients with non-mutated JAK2 or MPL essential thrombocythemia (ET) and primary myelofibrosis (PMF). At the end of 2013, two studies identified recurrent mutations in the gene encoding calreticulin (CALR) using whole-exome sequencing. These mutations were revealed in the majority of ET and PMF patients with non-mutated JAK2 or MPL but not in polycythemia vera patients. Somatic 52-bp deletions (type 1 mutations) and recurrent 5-bp insertions (type 2 mutations) in exon 9 of the CALR gene (the last exon encoding the C-terminal amino acids of the protein calreticulin) were detected and found always to generate frameshift mutations. All detected mutant calreticulin proteins shared a novel amino acid sequence at the C-terminal. Mutations in CALR are acquired early in the clonal history of the disease, and they cause activation of JAK/STAT signaling. The CALR mutations are the second most frequent mutations in Ph- MPN patients after the JAK2V617F mutation, and their detection has significantly improved the diagnostic approach for ET and PMF. The characteristics of the CALR mutations as well as their diagnostic, clinical, and pathogenesis implications are discussed in this review.
