Active clinical trials for "Ventricular Dysfunction"

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a medical condition that is due to left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD). LVSD is a decreased ability of the heart to pump blood forward. There are 5 million people in the United States that have CHF and 52,828 new cases are diagnosed annually. There are 995,000 hospital visits and 52,828 deaths annually due to CHF. Previous studies have shown that people with this condition are at a higher risk for complications immediately after any type of heart surgery than are normal individuals. This includes increased dependence on medications and devices to improve the pumping function of the heart and blood pressure. Additionally, they also have longer lengths of hospital stay and higher rates of death compared to normal individuals. Some patients with LVSD not only have a decreased pumping ability of the heart, they also have an inefficient pumping function. These patients have been shown to benefit from a device therapy known as biventricular pacing. Biventricular pacing involves simultaneously electrically stimulating the two major pumping chambers of the heart known as ventricles using a pacemaker and wires. This causes a more coordinated contraction of the heart chambers resulting in improvement in the pumping ability of the heart and blood pressure. Studies have confirmed that in these patients, implantation of a biventricular pacemaker improves patients' symptoms and quality of life as well as decreasing a need for future hospitalizations. Whether biventricular pacing in patients with LVSD improves patient outcomes after heart surgery has not been investigated. Some patients temporarily develop slow heart rates after cardiovascular surgery. These slow heart rates can cause a decrease in the blood pumped from the heart and result in low blood pressures. Therefore, all patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery, regardless of left ventricular function, receive temporary pacing wires that are placed on one of the ventricles during the surgery. Temporary pacing will result in an increase in heart rate and improvement in the amount of blood pumped by the heart and in blood pressure. The placement of these wires is precautionary as only a few patients need to be paced for slow heart rates. Once patients are felt to no longer require them, the wires are easily removed. The purpose of this study is to determine whether biventricular pacing immediately after heart surgery in patients with LVSD will improve in-hospital outcomes. Patients that are scheduled for heart surgery and meet the inclusion criteria will be approached for consent to participate in this study. Once consented, they will be randomized to one of three treatment arms: usual care, RV pacing (single ventricle pacing), or biventricular pacing. Randomization is a process similar to picking numbers out of a hat. The patients will then undergo surgery as scheduled. During the surgery, the patients will receive the temporary pacing wires on both ventricles instead of one. Immediately after surgery, the patients will receive either usual care, RV pacing, or biventricular pacing depending upon the treatment arm that they were randomized to. The pacing wires will be removed as soon as the patients become stable as per routine. The clinical, operative, and in-hospital characteristics of these patients will be recorded on specialized forms. The characteristics of those that received biventricular pacing will be compared to those that had RV or no pacing to see whether there was any benefit to this mode of therapy.

Repair of tetralogy of Fallot (TOF), the most common form of cyanotic congenital heart disease, usually involves surgery on the outflow of the right ventricle (RV) and the pulmonary valve in order to relieve obstruction to blood flow from the RV to the lungs. This procedure often leads to regurgitation (leakage) of the pulmonary valve, which puts the burden of handling a larger than normal amount of blood flow on the RV. Over the years, that extra burden leads to enlargement of the RV and to a decrease in its function. Treatment often includes surgical insertion or replacement of a new pulmonary valve. Replacement of the damaged pulmonary valve aims to minimize the leakage and help the RV function better. This study is designed to compare two methods of how the operation (called pulmonary valve replacement [PVR]) is performed. In the first method, a new valve is inserted and only the area of the old valve is operated on; this is the standard PVR. The second method involves inserting the new valve in the same way as the standard method but, in addition, areas of the right ventricular wall that are scarred and not functioning well are removed (PVR plus right ventricular remodeling). This study will evaluate which method is more effective based on the size and function of the RV measured by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) six months following surgery, as compared to its size and function before the operation.

To determine whether peripheral low dose systemic thrombolysis (PLST) is non-inferior to catheter directed acoustic pulse thrombolysis (ACDT) in improving RV function and reducing pulmonary artery pressures in submassive pulmonary embolism (PE)

This is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, active-controlled, dose-titrating phase 2 study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of firibastat administered orally BID (2 daily doses) versus ramipril administered orally BID over 12 weeks after acute anterior MI. Subjects will be followed for 12 weeks (over 4 study visits). A total of 294 male and female subjects with a diagnosis of first acute anterior MI will be randomized. The subjects will need to have a primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) of the index MI related artery within 24 hours after MI.

Trastuzumab is an important treatment for HER 2 positive breast cancer. But trastuzumab can cause injury to the heart, and this is one of the main reasons it cannot be administered as planned. Heart injury can often be successfully treated using cardiac medications. The aim of SCHOLAR is to evaluate whether it is safe to continue trastuzumab in individuals with mild or moderate cardiac injury, while treating them with appropriate cardiac medications. In this way the investigators hope to be able to optimise the delivery of a treatment to patients with breast cancer that has proven survival benefits, especially when administered for a full 12-month course.

Thirty (30) patients with chronic ischemic left ventricular dysfunction secondary to MI scheduled to undergo cardiac catheterization will be enrolled in the study. This is a phase II study intended to gain additional safety and efficacy assessments among two dose levels previously studied in a phase I setting.

All individuals who receive a heart transplant are at risk for developing antibody-mediated rejection (AMR). An antibody is a protein produced by the body's immune system when it detects a foreign substance, called an antigen. The mechanism of an antibody is to attack an antigen. In antibody mediated rejection, antibodies will attack the transplanted heart, causing injury to the heart. The purpose of this investigation is to determine if a study drug, called eculizumab (Soliris), is safe to use in heart transplant recipients, and determine if it reduces risk of antibody-mediated rejection.

The study aims to use cardiac MRI scans and analysis techniques to evaluate differences in cardiac function after 12 months of pacing in patients with pacing leads placed in different positions within the right ventricle (apically or septally).

The WiCS-LV system is an alternative means to providing left ventricular stimulation for Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and performance of the WiCS-LV System in patients with indications for CRT.

The technique of transplanting progenitor cells into a region of damaged myocardium, termed cellular cardiomyoplasty, is a potentially new therapeutic modality designed to replace or repair necrotic, scarred, or dysfunctional myocardium. Ideally, graft cells should be readily available, easy to culture to ensure adequate quantities for transplantation, and able to survive in host myocardium; often a hostile environment of limited blood supply and immunorejection. Whether effective cellular regenerative strategies require that administered cells differentiate into adult cardiomyocytes and couple electromechanically with the surrounding myocardium is increasingly controversial, and recent evidence suggests that this may not be required for effective cardiac repair. Most importantly, transplantation of graft cells should improve cardiac function and prevent adverse ventricular remodeling. To date, a number of candidate cells have been transplanted in experimental models, including fetal and neonatal cardiomyocytes, embryonic stem cell-derived myocytes, tissue engineered contractile grafts, skeletal myoblasts, several cell types derived from adult bone marrow, and cardiac precursors residing within the heart itself. There has been substantial clinical development in the use of whole bone marrow and skeletal myoblast preparations in studies enrolling both post-infarction patients, and patients with chronic ischemic left ventricular dysfunction and heart failure. The effects of bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have also been studies clinically. Currently, bone marrow or bone marrow-derived cells represent highly promising modality for cardiac repair. The totality of evidence from trials investigating autologous whole bone marrow infusions into patients following myocardial infarction supports the safety of this approach. In terms of efficacy, increases in ejection fraction are reported in the majority of the trials. Chronic ischemic left ventricular dysfunction resulting from heart disease is a common and problematic condition; definitive therapy in the form of heart transplantation is available to only a tiny minority of eligible patients. Cellular cardiomyoplasty for chronic heart failure has been studied less than for acute MI, but represents a potentially important alternative for this disease.