Giornale italiano di cardiologia : organo ufficiale della Federazione italiana di cardiologia : organo ufficiale della Società italiana di chirurgia cardiaca
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G Ital Cardiol (Rome) · Jul 2015
[An increase of infective endocarditis cases in England seen with concomitant reduction in antibiotic prophylaxis since the implementation of NICE guidelines in 2008: possible explanations].
Dayer and colleagues recently reported in The Lancet an increased incidence of infective endocarditis in England since 2008, year of NICE guideline on the restriction of antibiotic prophylaxis. They observed a concomitant decrease in the use of antibiotic prophylaxis. The temporal link between reduction of prophylaxis prescribing and increase of infective endocarditis raises the question of whether there is a causal association. In view of this observation, should we rethink antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent infective endocarditis?
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G Ital Cardiol (Rome) · Jul 2015
[Implementation of post-resuscitation care in adult cardiac arrest patients - Experts' opinion].
Current evidence on post-resuscitation care suffers from important knowledge gaps on new treatments and prognostication, mainly because of the lack of large multicenter randomized trials. However, optimization of post-resuscitation care is crucial, and the establishment of a treatment easy to be accepted and implemented locally, based on currently available evidence, is advisable. ⋯ The suggestions reported in this document are intended for adult patients resuscitated from both out-of-hospital and in-hospital cardiac arrest. They should be considered solely as an experts' opinion aimed to improve post-cardiac arrest care and they do not represent an official national guideline.
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G Ital Cardiol (Rome) · Jun 2015
Observational Study[Nonvalvular atrial fibrillation: data from the Observatory of Cardiovascular Diseases in the province of Trieste (Italy)].
Nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) is the most common arrhythmia in outpatients and is associated with increased mortality, thromboembolic and hemorrhagic events. Although several international studies have evaluated its prognostic impact in the real world, Italian data are still lacking. Our aim was to define the prevalence, comorbidity, treatment and outcome in a population of "real-life" outpatients with NVAF. ⋯ In "real-life" outpatients NVAF is associated with older age, more comorbidities and increased cardiovascular events. CHA2DS2-VASc and HAS-BLED scores predict accurately the risk for thromboembolic and hemorrhagic events. Oral anticoagulation reduces thromboembolic events, but its use is limited to just half of the patients.