Cardiology Commons^™

The Morbidity & Mortality Of Prevalent Heart Failure, Jennifer Kwon

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The first study population included 292 unselected consecutive patients from the LLUMC heart failure clinic who were enrolled in the study from January to July 2006 and were followed up through the end of December 2010. The treatment policy at the clinic was to uptitrate dosages of beta-adrenergic blockade (β-blockers), angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB) to the most tolerable levels in order to reach target dosages, as recommended by the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA). Patients were classified into systolic heart failure (ejection fraction (EF) < 40%) or diastolic heart failure (EF≥40%). All dosages of β-blockers, ACEi and ARB were extracted through chart reviews and were used as the main predictors of the patients' survival. Results from analyses showed that reaching target dosages of β-blockers and ACEi/ARB may increase survival when compared to not reaching target among the systolic HF population (HR_{β_biockers}= 0.64, 95% CI 0.26-1.56 and HR_ACEi/ARB=0.50, …

A Study Of Fever Differences Following Cardiac Surgery, Cleta Phyllis Lane

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of this study was to find out whether the temperature level following heart and great vessel surgery is greater following the use of the heart-lung machine than those following closed heart surgery or cardiac and great vessel surgery with the use of hypothermia.

The method used was the descriptive survey. Data were obtained from medical records in one selected hospital. The desired number of charts was 50 for each of the three categories. The categories were identified by groups as follows:

Group I: patients having had cardiac surgery by a closed heart technique. All of the patients in …