Cardiology

Dehydrated stroke patients tend to do worse than those who are hydrated, a Johns Hopkins team found. The next question is whether all such ischemic stroke patients should get fluids when they arrive at the hospital, contrary to current recommendations.

Patients who have strokes during their sleep pose a treatment conundrum. Since it is hard to assess when the stroke happened, physicians may not know whether to administer clot-busting tPA. The drug is thought to have a therapeutic window of 3 hours. A Texas study suggests tPA is safe for these patients even if the 3-hr window has closed.

There are many factors to consider when treating a stroke patient during their recovery time. One area which some researchers say requires more attention is overcoming fatigue in patients.

In a new presentation on the game-changing trial of neurological interventions for stroke patients, a MR CLEAN researcher crunched the numbers on time-to-reperfusion and patient outcomes.

While the ESCAPE trial and others like it showed benefits for stroke patient treatment, they also showed the need for specialized doctors to perform the procedure.

Several studies have reported that controlling blood pressure with medication improves cardiovascular outcomes.

Endovascular surgery was one of the focal points of the International Stroke Conference in Nashville and the results of several studies, including the ESCAPE trials showed the benefits it can hold for stroke patients.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) reported that one in 10 American adults had some level of chronic kidney disease (CKD), and that kidney disease is the 9th leading cause of death in the US.

Even as the Cold War becomes a distant memory patients in Eastern Europe are at greater risk of suffering a stroke than their western neighbors but do not have the same treatment and prevention options available to them.

Many factors contribute to a patient being diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, including obesity. Research is looking at the condition's role in the treatment of stroke patients.

Following a stroke patients require a variety of rehabilitation options from physical and occupational therapy to speech therapy among others. A recent study looked at the benefits of aerobic exercise in the recovery process.

It's too soon to say whether Vitamin D is a player or just a bystander in the assault on the brain during a stroke, but low levels of the supplement are associated with greater tissue damage in stroke patients, a University of Massachusetts Medical School team found. Reporting at the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference in Nashville, Tenn., Nils Henninger, MD said low vitamin D level predicts more severe strokes and poorer health afterwards.

The treatment a stroke patient gets can sometimes be determined by where they go for their care. The imaging used to determine treatment options however can be almost universal when used correctly.

Surviving a stroke but driving a month afterwards could mean a higher chance of causing a motor vehicle accident, two small Canadian studies have found. In research presented at the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in Nashville, Tenn, two graduate students reported on serious driving errors patients made post-stroke. They were tested on driving simulators.

With CT scans and MRI doctors can get a clearer picture of a stroke patient's condition and how best to treat them.

There are many treatment options for stroke patients and many advancements in the field recently with some being more aggressive than others. The benefits of each also pose potential problems for patients.

At the International Stroke Conference in Nashville, Marion Buckwalter, MD, PhD, presented the results of a study looking at the link between B Lymphocytes and dementia in mice. The study could help with the treatment of post-stroke human patients in the future.

Several trials have been conducted, and many more are yet to be completed, that have the goal of addressing whether intensive blood glucose control and intensive blood pressure (BP) control have any long-term benefit on all-cause mortality and major cardiovascular events. Contradictory data have been published with respect to the short- and long-term benefits of aggressive BP and blood glucose control versus conventional treatments for BP and glucose control. This review presents the main points of some of the important trials to date on this subject.

Kyra Becker, MD, chair of the International Stroke Conference 2015 Program Committee, discusses several key topics of interest to watch for at this year's event.

Air pollution should be viewed as one of several major modifiable risk factors in the prevention and management of cardiovascular disease.

This issue of Cardiology Review discusses many important articles and viewpoints that I am sure you will find quite useful.

Each year, the American Heart Association's (AHA's) Scientific Sessions is the organization's largest yearly gathering of healthcare professionals and researchers in the field of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Providing 5 days of comprehensive education with more than 4000 presentations by world leaders in cardiovascular disease, the AHA 2014 Scientific Sessions featured the results of landmark and long-awaited clinical trials.

Worsening renal function over time is associated with poorer outcomes in patients with acute and chronic HF. Although this association is established in patients with reduced ejection fraction, there are no data about the relationship between WRF and outcomes in HF patients with preserved ejection fraction.

It is generally accepted that drug-eluting stents (DES) decrease the risk of restenosis in native coronary arteries compared with bare metal stents. However, the overall safety and benefit of DES implantation, including long-term benefits, in saphenous vein bypass grafts remains the subject, at least to some extent, of continued evaluation.

A recent study has generated a great deal of excitement because Dutch researchers reported that a new intra-arterial treatment greatly improves the prognosis for people with acute ischemic stroke caused by a proximal intracranial arterial occlusion of the anterior circulation.

Is degree of diffuse myocardial fibrosis associated with severity of diastolic dysfunction in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction?

Drug therapy is recognized as an effective way to lower lipids and control hypertension, and for its effect on reducing the incidence of myocardial infarction. However, the impact of personal habits, such as eating, drinking, smoking, and exercise, on the incidence of coronary heart disease without reliance on prescription medications and their potential side effects may be less well established.

Although digoxin has a very long clinical history, no randomized controlled trial has evaluated the use of digoxin for atrial fibrillation (AF). Therefore, the evidence for its use in AF is based on post hoc analyses of RCTs or on findings from observational studies. Several studies have shown the association of digoxin use with increased mortality rates. However, other studies have reported the opposite conclusions, and it remains controversial whether digoxin use is associated with increased mortality in patients with AF.

Patients with high body mass indexes and obesity are at greater risk for developing obstructive sleep apnea. This meta-analysis looked to determine if the use of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure for sleep apnea would result in weight loss or weight gain.

As electronic health records become more prevalent in the healthcare community, the number of software options doctors can choose from seems to range as widely as the practices themselves.