Active clinical trials for "Heart Valve Diseases"

New strategies are needed to early detect myocardial involvement in these diseases. Histological studies showed that diffuse fibrosis and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy precede the LV remodelling (dilatation) observed by cardiac imaging. Quantification of LV diffuse myocardial fibrosis using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could reach this goal. Recently, contrast enhanced cardiac MRI has been used to measure the extracellular volume fraction (ECV) of the myocardium, and it has been able to detect diffuse myocardial fibrosis. In diseases in which increased collagen deposition enlarges the extra-cellular space, the ECV can act as a fibrosis index. ECV is correlated with the amount of fibrosis measured by histology. Left ventricular overloads induced by regurgitant VHD result in cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and diffuse fibrosis. Other methods can be used to estimate the degree of myocardial fibrosis such as the serum level of galectine-3 or ST2. Moreover, although the pathophysiological mechanisms leading to the occurrence of myocardial fibrosis differ in patients with various cardiac diseases, the cellular effectors of fibrotic remodelling are common and involve similar signalling pathways. At the cellular level, key progression of ventricular hypertrophy is associated with increased cardiomyocytes apoptosis and fibrosis, suggesting that these two processes are responsible for the transition. To our knowledge, no study has analysed the impact of the rate of myocardial diffuse fibrosis, non-invasively estimated by ECV, in the risk of LV dysfunction during MR and AR, especially after surgery. The measurement of ECV could become an important tool for risk stratification in left-sided regurgitant VHD. Thus, it would provide an early marker of LV myocardial involvement before the occurrence of global remodeling, might help physicians in surgical decision, and would improve prognosis. This is an innovative original project because it uses modern imaging modalities to answer to a crucial question. The clinical implications would be important because this work would modify the international surgical indications of MR and AR in order to finally improve the prognosis of patients with this frequent heart disease. Moreover, investigators will analyze the genetic factors that can influence the myocardial reaction resulting from these regurgitations, which will improve the quality of this work and offer new future perspectives. Investigators hypothesize that the ECV measurement could be used as an early predictor of LV dysfunction in the left-sided valve regurgitations.

The purpose of this study is to determine the frequency of prosthesis-patient mismatch after mitral valve replacement and its effect on clinical outcomes.

Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a form of congenital heart disease (the person is born with it). With BAV, the heart valves in the aorta (the blood vessel that takes blood away from the heart to the body) are not formed right. A person with BAV has only 2 leaflets instead of three and the valve leaflets are often thickened. This can result in the block of blood flow across the valve (aortic stenosis) and/or valve leakage (aortic valve regurgitation). From our experience at least 1/3 of patients with BAV will eventually develop complications. Many patients with BAV do not develop significant problems until well into adulthood. The most common problem in BAV patients is aortic dilatation and/or dissection. At this point, we do not know on who or why aortic dilatation or dissection occurs.It is unclear whether the enlargement is because of abnormal blood flow patterns, as a result of the shape of the bicuspid valve, or whether it is because the way the aortic valve and/or vessel is formed. In other words, the abnormal shape of the aortic valve may cause blood to flow in a different way than it normally would, causing damage to the aorta as blood leaves the heart. There may be a problem with the way the aortic valve connects to the aorta, which causes the aorta to get larger or break down over time. It is also possible that the wall of the aorta in patients with BAV is weaker than it would be in patients without BAV. At this point, we do not know. It is believed by the investigators that if we can determine why the aorta gets larger or tears, we can minimize the effects or prevent them altogether. This study will collect blood and cardiac MRI images from forty-five (45) patients at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Egleston. There will be a study group (patients with BAV) and a control group of patients (patients scheduled for a cardiac MRI but without BAV). All enrolled patients will have blood drawn by nursing staff from a peripheral vein and collected in tubes for testing the day of their MRI scan. This test is called a plasma matrix metalloproteinase level. It is believed that patients who have bicuspid aortic valves and dilated aortas have high plasma levels of this protein. This study will compare the MRI images and plasma matrix protein levels of all the patients participating in the study.

Iron is involved in essential functions of the body. It allows the transport of oxygen in the blood, via hemoglobin, at the muscular level, via myoglobin, and it is also involved in cellular metabolism in general, in particular for the production of ATP at the mitochondrial level, within the cytochromes and iron-sulfur proteins of the respiratory chain. Recently, iron deficiency has been identified as an important prognostic factor in heart failure patients. Iron therapy improves symptoms and physical performances of heart failure patients, even in the absence of anemia. As a result, the correction of iron deficiency is now proposed as one of the therapies for heart failure. However, the pathophysiology of the association between cardiac dysfunction and iron deficiency is still poorly understood. The investigators previously developed a mouse model of iron deficiency without anemia, in which the investigators observed impaired physical performances, a decrease of left ventricular ejection fraction, and a decrease in mitochondrial complex I activity. These abnormalities were normalized after iron injection. These animal data suggest that iron deficiency is responsible for left ventricular dysfunction secondary to mitochondrial I complex abnormalities, and that iron therapy corrects them. Iron deficiency is very common in the preoperative period of cardiac surgery, affecting 40 to 50% of patients. During this surgery, it is possible to perform a myocardial biopsy without risk to the patient. The purpose of this study is to verify in patients requiring valvular heart surgery, if iron deficiency is responsible for a decrease in mitochondrial complex I activity and a decrease in cardiac function during the perioperative period, and to verify whether iron treatment improves these abnormalities.

Valvular Heart Disease currently affects 2.5% of the population, but is overwhelmingly a disease of the elderly and consequently on the rise. It is dominated by two conditions, Aortic Stenosis and Mitral Regurgitation, both of which are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, yet which pose a truly demanding challenge for treatment optimisation. By combining multiple complex modelling components, a comprehensive, clinically-compliant decision-support system will be developed to meet this challenge, by quantifying individualised disease severity and patient impairment, predicting disease progression, ranking the effectiveness of alternative candidate procedures, and optimising the patient-specific intervention plan. In addition the DSS will improve knowledge of disease mechanisms by applying a holistic assessment of cardiovascular function that includes hemodynamic data at all cardiovascular compartments (ventricle, valve, vessels) and multiscale components that couple organ with cell function. DSS may have major impact on patients with borderline indications for treatment (valve replacement/repair), complex hemodynamic conditions such as combined aortic-mitral valve disease and valve geometries that are subject to valve repair. The target user of this Decision Support System is the healthcare professional, in this case the surgeon or cardiologist, who will make the decision on the nature and timing of the intervention. The major advance of this system over current practice is that it integrates and interprets all heterogeneous data available about the patient, integrates population data where needed, and provides a consistent, repeatable, quantitative and auditable record of the information that contributes to the decision process.

Pre-habilitation programs that combine physical training, nutritional support and emotional reinforcement have demonstrated efficacy as presurgical optimization strategies in the context of digestive surgery. The experience in patients at risk for cardiac surgery, one of those associated with higher morbidity and mortality, is anecdotal. Main objective: to evaluate the feasibility, efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a pre-habilitation program for the improvement of preoperative functional capacity in high-risk and intermediate risk groups for cardiac surgery and its impact on the reduction of postoperative complications (primary endpoint). Secondary objectives: (i) in-hospital stay; (ii) symptoms, quality of life, (iii) evaluation of information and communication technologies (ICT) as a support for the pre-habilitation, and (iv) design and validation of indicators for a future large-scale implementation of this type of intervention. Design: Subproject: #1: Prospective study of the efficacy of prehabilitation in heart transplant candidates during the study period. The results will be compared with historical records; #2: Randomized controlled trial with a 1:1 ratio to assess the efficacy of prehabilitation in patients undergoing elective coronary revascularization or valve replacement surgery. Subjects: Subproject #1: 40 patients candidates for heart transplantation. Subproject #2: 80 patients in the prehabilitation group and 80 controls in which a conventional treatment will be performed. Intervention: (i) personalized supervised resistance training, and (ii) program to promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles. The overall duration of the intervention is estimated to be at least 4-6 weeks (variable in each subproject). The support with ICTs will be a significant aspect of the program in which the adaptation of the personal health folder of Catalonia (Cat@SalutLaMevaSalut) will be fundamental.

The diagnosis of valvular heart disease (VHD), or its absence, invariably requires cardiac imaging. A familiar and inexpensive tool to assist in the diagnosis or exclusion of significant VHD could both expedite access to life-saving therapies and reduce the need for costly testing. The FDA-approved Eko Duo device consists of a digital stethoscope and a single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG), which wirelessly pairs with the Eko Mobile application to allow for simultaneous recording and visualization of phono- and electrocardiograms. These features uniquely situate this device to accumulate large sets of auscultatory data on patients both with and without VHD. In this study, the investigators seek to develop an automated system to identify VHD by phono- and electrocardiogram. Specifically, the investigators will attempt to develop machine learning algorithms to learn the phonocardiograms of patients with clinically important aortic stenosis (AS) or mitral regurgitation (MR), and then task the algorithms to identify subjects with clinically important VHD, as identified by a gold standard, from naïve phonocardiograms. The investigators anticipate that the study has the potential to revolutionize the diagnosis of VHD by providing a more accurate substitute to traditional auscultation.

The ability to quantify flow directly using through-plane phase contrast velocity mapping is a unique advantage of cardiovascular magnetic resonance and does not rely on the calculation from complex equations as echocardiography. The aim s is to study the role of cardiac MRI in the evaluation of valvular heart disease through quantification of the impact of valvular lesions upon cardiac function by accurate estimation of the left ventricular ejection fraction

Being easy, bedside, non-expensive, noninvasive and radiation free, there has been a growing interest in the implementation of lung ultrasound in critical care management in the last decade, cardiac surgery was not an exception in both adult and pediatric surgeries Many predictors for open heart surgery outcomes have been studied in past years including The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) risk score and the EuroSCORE (ES), preoperative clinical condition, associated chronic diseases, type of surgery, age, duration of cardiopulmonary bypass and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), cystatin-C A recent study described the use of a novel postoperative lung ultrasound score scanning for B lines which denote subpleural interstitial edema in various lung regions for predicting critical care length of stay in pediatric cardiac surgeries. The objective of the current study is to evaluate the role of the new lung ultrasound score in predicting the length of postoperative intensive care stay after adult open heart surgeries.

The purpose of the study is to compare dexmedetomidine and ketofol to find a suitable alternative for moderate sedation in out-patient diagnostic trans-esophageal echocardiography.