New perspectives in cardiovascular risk reduction: focus on HDL

Cardiovascular diseases represent the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, mostly contributing to hospitalizations and health care costs. Dyslipidemias represent one of the major cardiovascular risk factor and its management, throughout life-style modifications and pharmacological interventions, has shown to reduce cardiac events. The risk of adverse cardiovascular events is related not only to elevated LDL blood levels, but also to decreased HDL concentrations, that exhibit protective effects in the development of atherosclerotic process. Aim of this review is to summarize current evidences about defensing effects of such lipoproteins and to show the most recent pharmacological strategies to reduce cardiovascular risk through the increase of their circulating levels

Imaging techniques for assessment of coronary flow reserve

The assessment of coronary flow reserve (CFR) may be useful for the functional evaluation of coronary artery disease (CAD). Invasive techniques, such as intracoronary Doppler ultrasound and pressure-derived method, directly assess CFR velocity and fractional flow reserve. Positron emission tomography (PET) has emerged as an accurate noninvasive technique to quantify CFR. Nevertheless, this approach has not been applied to routine studies because of its high cost and complexity. Recently, attempts to estimate CFR with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) tracers have been made in order to obtain, with noninvasive methods, data for quantitative functional assessment of CAD. This review analyzes the relative merit and limitations of CFR measurements by cardiac imaging techniques and describes the potential clinical applications

Endothelial dysfunction in type 2 diabetic patients with normal coronary arteries. A peripheral arterial tonometry study

Aim: to evaluate endothelial function (EF) in diabetic and non-diabetic patients without CAD by peripheral artery tonometry (PAT) technique. Methods: a cohort of 94 patients (55 men and 39 postmenopausal women; mean age 63±9 years) undergoing coronary angiography was divided into 2 groups: 58 patients with DM and (group 1) and 36 patients without DM. Endothelial dysfunction (ED) was assessed by digital pulse amplitude, using a fingertip peripheral arterial tonometry (PAT). As a measure of ED, reactive hyperemia index (RHI) was calculated as the ratio of the digital pulse volume during reactive hyperemia following 5 min ischemia and its basal value. Results: prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors was similar between the two groups. RHI values were significantly lower in diabetic patients compared to non-diabetics (1.72±0.34 vs 2.00±0.44; p<0.005) and they correlated with levels of glycosylated hemoglobin (p=0.05; r=-0.266). Conclusion: despite similar level of other risk factors, EF was much more impaired in diabetic patients than in non-diabetics. These evidences further support the impact of DM on cardiovascular risk

Corrigendum to \u201cA predictive model for early mortality after surgical treatment of heart valve or prosthesis infective endocarditis. The EndoSCORE\u201d. [Int. J. Cardiol. 241 (Aug 15 2017) 97\u2013102](S0167527317309877)(10.1016/j.ijcard.2017.03.148)

The authors regret that the first name and last name of the author Sandro Sponga was published incorrectly in the original version and this has now been corrected

A predictive model for early mortality after surgical treatment of heart valve or prosthesis infective endocarditis. The EndoSCORE

Background The aim of this large retrospective study was to provide a logistic risk model along an additive score to predict early mortality after surgical treatment of patients with heart valve or prosthesis infective endocarditis (IE). Methods From 2000 to 2015, 2715 patients with native valve endocarditis (NVE) or prosthesis valve endocarditis (PVE) were operated on in 26 Italian Cardiac Surgery Centers. The relationship between early mortality and covariates was evaluated with logistic mixed effect models. Fixed effects are parameters associated with the entire population or with certain repeatable levels of experimental factors, while random effects are associated with individual experimental units (centers). Results Early mortality was 11.0% (298/2715); At mixed effect logistic regression the following variables were found associated with early mortality: age class, female gender, LVEF, preoperative shock, COPD, creatinine value above 2\ua0mg/dl, presence of abscess, number of treated valve/prosthesis (with respect to one treated valve/prosthesis) and the isolation of Staphylococcus aureus, Fungus spp., Pseudomonas Aeruginosa and other micro-organisms, while Streptococcus spp., Enterococcus spp. and other Staphylococci did not affect early mortality, as well as no micro-organisms isolation. LVEF was found linearly associated with outcomes while non-linear association between mortality and age was tested and the best model was found with a categorization into four classes (AUC\ua0=\ua00.851). Conclusions The following study provides a logistic risk model to predict early mortality in patients with heart valve or prosthesis infective endocarditis undergoing surgical treatment, called \u201cThe EndoSCORE\u201d