Repaired Tetralogy of Fallot Italian Registry
Tetralogy of FallotCardiac Death3 moreThe CMR/CT WG of the Italian pediatric cardiology society set up a multi-center observational clinical database of repaired-TOF evaluated. This registry will enroll prospectively patients evaluated by CMR for clinical indication in most of the CHD Italian centers. Data collection will include surgical history, clinical data, imaging data, and also adverse cardiac events for a period of 6 years.
Fetal Electrophysiologic Abnormalities in High-Risk Pregnancies Associated With Fetal Demise
High Risk PregnancyCongenital Heart Disease16 moreEach year world-wide, 2.5 million fetuses die unexpectedly in the last half of pregnancy, 25,000 in the United States, making fetal demise ten-times more common than Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This study will apply a novel type of non-invasive monitoring, called fetal magnetocardiography (fMCG) used thus far to successfully evaluate fetal arrhythmias, in order to discover potential hidden electrophysiologic abnormalities that could lead to fetal demise in five high-risk pregnancy conditions associated with fetal demise.
Causes of Fetal Death: Comparison of Diagnostic Accuracy Between Extensive and Selective Protocol...
Intrauterine Fetal DeathIntrauterine fetal death (IUFD) is defined as the occurrence of fetal death at >20 weeks' gestation. IUFD affects about 1 in 160 pregnancies (6-7 per 1000 births). Optimal diagnostic evaluation for cases of IUFD is generally based on extensive protocol testing i.e. maternal and fetal blood tests, fetal bacteriology, cytogenetic analysis, autopsy, and placental examination. This extensive protocol testing may vary in clinical practice and interpretation of the results is rarely performed by multidisciplinary staff to establish cause of death. These findings are related to the fact that there are very few epidemiological studies to validate optimal protocol, no French recommendations on this subject, and a relative lack of pathologists with expertise in perinatal pathology. Only, one recent prospective study from the Netherlands has concluded that extensive protocol testing should be redefined and some diagnostics tests may only be performed with suggestive clinical circumstances. However these recommendations may not be applicable to all populations and countries. To date, there are no French published series on IUFD to evaluate causes of death in France and thereafter to better define optimal diagnostic evaluation tests. Improvement in prenatal diagnosis in France may contribute to detection of the vast majority of severe chromosomal abnormalities and malformed fetuses and particularly those at risk of death. Retrospective cohort unpublished data on IUFD from Lille and Caen have reported exceptional deaths attributable to chromosomal or malformation abnormalities. In fact in these two series, most deaths were related to placental diseases or fetal growth retardation. The hypothesis is that extensive protocol testing is not helpful in clinical practice and selective protocol testing focused on specific risk situations can be as efficient.
Endothelial Dysfunction and Non-cardiac Surgery
SurgeryCardiac Death2 moreEndothelial dysfunction is a cardiovascular disease hallmark. After non-cardiac surgery, cardiovascular events correlate with surgical outcomes. Understanding the role of endothelial function in these events is crucial. This research aims to study endothelial function and its association with cardiovascular events.
Incidence of Complications of Brain Death
Brain DeathThe purpose of the study is to describe the incidence of complications in brain death adult organ donors.
Case Studies of Patients Who Had Experienced Near Death Experience
Near Death ExperienceAn prospective observational study to interview patients who had near death experiences among those who had received intensive care unit intervention during admission in hematology ward.
Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes and Programmed Cell Death - Ligand 1 in Breast Cancer
Breast CancerTumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes1 moreThe morphological evaluation of Tumor-infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) in breast cancer is gaining momentum as evidence strengthens for the clinical relevance of this immunological biomarker. In breast cancer (BC) lesions, TILs are seen in intratumoral and stromal areas. TILs are predictive of response to treatment and this association appears to be strongest in Triple-negative (TNBC) and Her 2 (Human epidermal growth factor receptor) positive breast cancer subtypes. Contrastingly, the association in Estrogen Receptor (ER) positive, HER 2 negative tumors have not been established. Programmed cell death 1 (PD-1), are receptors expressed on the surface of T, B, and Natural killer cells and in some tumor cells. These attenuate the cellular immune response by inducing T-cell apoptosis. Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) overexpression is reported to be associated with large tumor size, lymph node metastasis, and ER-negativity. Importantly, PD-L1 is expressed more frequently in TNBC patients. High PD-L1 expression may be a prognostic indicator for reduced overall survival6. This information may be helpful to screen candidates for anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy, especially patients with TNBC The aim of this study is to characterize the cohort of patients with breast cancer based on a semiquantitative assessment of TILs and to correlate the concentration of TILs and PD-L1 in various intrinsic subtypes (based on Immunohistochemistry) with the overall outcome. Also to correlate the TILs and PD-L1 expression with tumor response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy (NACT) and to stratify the predictive value of this biomarker in TNBC.
Assessment of the Interest of ANI in the Non-communicating Patient in Palliative Care
End of LifePain1 moreComfort evaluation is one of the major challenges in the palliative care setting, particularly when it comes to non-communicative patients. ANI monitoring is a non-invasive and painless technique which evaluates the parasympathetic tone activity through heart rate variability. It has proven reliable for pain assessment during general anesthesia (GA) or for sedated critically ill patients. The parasympathetic activity seems to be a good reflect of the patient's comfort, implicating stress and anxiety. So, the ANI could be an interesting tool to assess the comfort of non-communicating end-of-life patients. That is why the goal of our study is to assess the interest of ANI to assess the comfort of non-communicating patients hospitalized in palliative care during a painful care by comparing the ANI measure to the CPOT scale realised by the nurses in a blind manner.
CMR Based Prediction of Ventricular Tachycardia Events in Healed Myocardial Infarction (DEVELOP-VT)...
Myocardial InfarctionMyocardial Infarction Old6 moreFibrotic tissue is known to be the substrate for the appearance of scar-related reentrant ventricular arrhythmias (VA) in chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM). Late gadolinium enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance (LGE-CMR) has proven to be a useful technique in the non-invasive characterization of the scarred tissue and the underlying arrhythmogenic substrate. Previous studies identified the presence of significant scarring (> 5% of the left ventricular -LV- mass) is an independent predictor of adverse outcome (all-cause mortality or appropriate ICD discharge for ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation) in patients being considered for implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) placement. Parallelly, the presence of heterogeneous tissue channels, which correlate with voltage channels after endocardial voltage mapping of the scar, can be more frequently observed in patients suffering from sustained monomorphic ventricular tachycardias (SMVT) than in matched controls for age, sex, infarct location, and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). However, the lack of solid evidence and randomized trials make LVEF still the main decision parameter when assessing suitability for ICD implantation in primary prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD). In a recent, case-control study, we identified the border zone channel (BZC) mass as the only independent predictor for VT occurrence, after matching for age, sex, LVEF and total scar mass. This BZC mass can be automatically calculated using a commercially available, post-processing imaging platform named ADAS 3D LV (ADAS3D Medical, Barcelona, Spain), with FDA 510(k) Clearance and European Community Mark approval. Thus, CMR-derived BZC mass might be used as an automatically reproducible criterium to reclassify those patients with chronic ICM at highest risk for developing VA/SCD in a relatively short period of approx. 2 years. In the present cohort study, we sought to evaluate the usefulness of the BZC mass measurement to predict the occurrence of VT events in a prospective, multicenter, unselected series of consecutive chronic ischemic patients without previous arrhythmia evidence, irrespectively of their LVEF.
Methods of Confirmation of Brain Death
Brain DeathOrgan DonationThe purpose of this study is to describe the use of methods confirming brain death in the real clinical practice of the transplant program in the Czech Republic.