• Colleen Juricek, Teruhiko Imamura, Ann Nguyen, Ben Chung, Daniel Rodgers, Nitasha Sarswat, Gene Kim, Jayant Raikhelkar, Takeyoshi Ota, Tae Song, Daniel Burkhoff, Gabriel Sayer, Valluvan Jeevanandam, and Nir Uriel.
• Department of Surgery, University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois.
• J. Card. Fail. 2018 Apr 1; 24 (4): 249-254.

BackgroundRecurrent gastrointestinal bleeding is one of the most significant adverse events in patients with left ventricular assist devices (LVADs).MethodsWe enrolled LVAD patients who had received an intramuscular injection of 20 mg octreotide every 4 weeks as secondary prevention for recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding despite conventional medical therapies and repeated transfusions. The frequency of gastrointestinal bleeding and other associated clinical outcomes before and during octreotide therapy were compared.ResultsThirty LVAD patients (66.4 ± 8.8 years old, 16 men [53%]) received octreotide therapy for 498.8 ± 356.0 days without any octreotide-associated adverse events. The frequency of gastrointestinal bleeding was decreased significantly during octreotide therapy (from 3.4 ± 3.1 to 0.7 ± 1.3 events/year; P < .001), accompanied by significant reductions in red blood cell and flesh frozen plasma transfusions, days in hospital, and need for endoscopic procedures (P < .05 for all).ConclusionsOctreotide therapy reduced the frequency of recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding and may be considered for secondary prevention.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

40 keywords...

hide…