Diseases Commons^™

Mechanisms Of Left Ventricular Thrombus Formation In Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction: Novel Insights From Two-Dimensional Speckle Tracking Echocardiography, Dhruv Chawla, Tracy Hammonds, Tadele Mengesha, Matt Umland, Khawaja Afzal Ammar, Vinay Thohan

Aurora Heart Failure / Transplant Faculty

Background: Patients suffering from heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) are at increased risk for left ventricular (LV) thrombus and subsequent thromboembolism, yet anticoagulation is not routinely recommended for left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) alone. We sought to determine the role of two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) to quantify regional changes in cardiac function associated with LV thrombus, which may prospectively guide anticoagulation.

Purpose: Help enable cardiovascular clinicians to use 2D-STE to evaluate regional strain patterns among patients with HFrEF with and without LV thrombus. Our results suggest that statistically lower regional longitudinal strain patterns in a well-matched cohort …

Echocardiographic Predictors Of Admission Among Patients With Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction, Chi C. Cho, Yang Shi, Robyn Shearer, Nasir Z. Sulemanjee, Dianne L. Zwicke, T. Edward Hastings, Omar M. Cheema, Vinay Thohan

Aurora Heart Failure / Transplant Faculty

Background: Congestive heart failure afflicts 5.7 million people in the United States with annual incidence of 600,000 and mortality of 280,000. Heart failure accounts for greater than 1 million hospitalizations annually and the single largest inpatient Medicare expense. As the U.S. population ages and greater emphasis is placed on population health as a means to bend projected health care expenditures, large health care organizations will need to develop algorithms to identify patients at high risk with heart failure and possibly preempt hospitalizations. Doppler echocardiography is routinely performed in clinical assessment of severe heart failure.

Purpose: We sought to determine echocardiographic …

Limiting Antibiotic Use In Acute Sinusitis: Partly A Matter Of Vocabulary?, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Dennis J. Baumgardner, MD

In his issue introduction, the editor-in-chief of Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews comments on an included article that describes the successful use of an electronic medical record best practice alert to reduce the rate of antibiotic prescription for acute sinusitis. Various methods previously tried to improve antibiotic stewardship in this illness are briefly reviewed. Borrowing on the model of acute bronchitis, it is suggested that a change in conveyed diagnostic vocabulary to “sinus cold” when describing acute sinusitis may help limit antibiotics for this predominantly viral infection.

Use Of Urine Antigen Testing For Blastomyces In An Integrated Health System, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Dennis J. Baumgardner, MD

Purpose: Blastomycosis, an endemic fungal infection, mimics many other diseases. We explored the use of Blastomyces urine antigen (BuAg), reportedly the most sensitive noninvasive test, in clinical practice and compared it to other noninvasive tests.

Methods: A total of 836 BuAg tests performed on unique patients (first test only) at one large integrated health system from June 2013 to May 2016 were retrospectively reviewed to examine test characteristics and demographic features. Of these, 100 cases from 2015, a year containing a large local blastomycosis outbreak, were randomly selected for detailed analysis.

Results: Demographics for the BuAg-tested population: mean age 54.9 …

Assessment Of Chronic Disease To Determine Appropriateness Of Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator Therapy, Bilal M. Omery, Maharaj Singh, Randy S. Turkel, Robyn Shearer, Arshad Jahangir, M. Eyman Mortada, Jasbir S. Sra, Indrajit Choudhuri

Indrajit Choudhuri, MD

Background: Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapy is considered appropriate when a patient is felt to have a reasonable expectation of 1-year survival. Chronic diseases have been estimated to be associated with greater than 10% annual mortality and may reduce benefits of ICD therapy. Frailty has been estimated to be associated with greater than 20% annual mortality and has been suggested to contraindicate ICD therapy.

Purpose: Determine a risk score that may identify patients in whom ICD implantation may not be appropriate.

Methods: Patients who received an ICD for primary and secondary prevention from 2008 through 2013 at the Aurora Health Care …