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) · Apr 2014
Practice Guideline[Choosing wisely: the Top 5 list of the Italian Association of Hospital Cardiologists (ANMCO)].
In recent years, a progressive increase in the number of medical diagnostic and interventional procedures has been observed, namely in cardiology. A significant proportion of them appear inappropriate, i.e. potentially redundant, harmful, costly, and useless. Recently, the document Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium: A Physician Charter, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation Putting the Charter into Practice program, JAMA's Less Is More and BMJ's Too Much Medicine series, and the American College of Physicians' High-Value, Cost-Conscious Care initiatives, have all begun to provide direction for physicians to address pervasive overuse in health care. ⋯ In Italy, Slow Medicine launched the analogue campaign Fare di più non significa fare meglio. The Italian Association of Hospital Cardiologists (ANMCO) endorsed the initiative by recognizing the need to optimize available resources, reduce costs and avoid unnecessary cardiovascular assessments, thereby enhancing the more efficient care delivery models. An ad hoc ANMCO Working Group prepared a list of five cardiac procedures that seem inappropriate for routine use in our country and, after an internal revision procedure, these are presented here.
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G Ital Cardiol (Rome) · Mar 2014
Multicenter Study Comparative Study Observational Study[Results of the OBSERVANT study: clinical characteristics and short-term outcome of the enrolled population treated with transcatheter versus surgical aortic valve implantation].
OBSERVANT represents the first national observational study on the comparative effectiveness of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) vs surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) at short, medium and long term, in a patient population with severe aortic stenosis (AS). The aim of this paper is to describe patient characteristics and short-term outcomes of the enrolled population. ⋯ Findings from the OBSERVANT study confirm that patients undergoing TAVI are older and sicker than patients undergoing SAVR. Nevertheless, the logistic EuroSCORE shows that, in Italy, also patients at intermediate surgical risk are treated with TAVI. Stratifying by logistic EuroSCORE, SAVR seems to be superior to TAVI in the subgroup of patients at very low risk. More sophisticated analyses on patient subgroups with comparable risk profile and on long-term follow-up will allow to obtain valuable information on the effectiveness of TAVI and SAVR procedures.
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G Ital Cardiol (Rome) · Mar 2014
Review[Use of sutureless prosthetic aortic valves in cardiac surgery].
In the last years, an increasing proportion of high-risk patients undergo surgical aortic valve replacement. In order to reduce the risk associated with cross-clamp time or cardioplegic ischemic time, sutureless aortic prostheses have been developed. ⋯ At present, three sutureless bioprostheses are available on the market: 3f Enable (Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA), Perceval (Sorin Group, Saluggia, Italy) and Intuity (Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, California, USA). This article provides an overview of the available literature on sutureless aortic valves with the aim to better define current role and future perspectives of sutureless aortic bioprostheses for the treatment of aortic valve stenosis.