Internal and emergency medicine
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We sought to assess the sex- and age-specific trends in venous thromboembolism (VTE) mortality in the 27 European Union Member States (EU-27) between years 2012 and 2020. Data on cause-specific deaths and population numbers by sex for each country of the EU-27 were retrieved through the publicly available European Statistical Office (EUROSTAT) dataset for the years 2012-2020. VTE-related deaths were ascertained when ICD-10 codes I26, I80, and I82.9 were listed as the primary cause of death in the medical death certificate. ⋯ On the contrary, the lower AAMR was mainly clustered in the Mediterranean area (Italy, Spain, and Cyprus). Over the last decade, the age-adjusted VTE-related mortality has been continuously declining in most of the in EU-27 Member States. However, some disparities still exist between western and eastern European countries.
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Sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE) is defined as a dysfunction of the central nervous system experienced during sepsis with variable clinical features. The study aims to identify the prognostic role of urinary ketone bodies in relation to clinical outcomes in patients with SAE. The Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database was used to conduct a retrospective cohort study. ⋯ Urinary ketone body levels were significantly associated with SOFA score and the use of vasopressors in patients with SAE. Furthermore, the SOFA score can predict the prognosis of short-term outcomes of patients with SAE. Therefore, we should closely monitor the changes of urinary ketone bodies and SOFA score and intervene in time.
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Antiangiogenics are associated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACE). The identification of at-risk subjects is relevant in the case of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), for which anti-angiogenic TKIs and bevacizumab are used in first and subsequent lines of therapy, to select alternative drugs for patients with excessive risk. We verified the ability to predict MACE in sorafenib-treated patients of the 2022 European Society of Cardiology (ESC-2022) score for anti-angiogenics and the recently proposed CARDIOSOR score. ⋯ ESC-2022 showed a better goodness of fit compared to the CARDIOSOR score [C-index 0.671 (0.583-0.758) vs 0.562 (0.501-0.634), p = 0.021], but this gap was eliminated using the linear version of CARDIOSOR. Both the ESC-2022 and CARDIOSOR scores discriminated patients at increased risk for MACE. The use of these scores in clinical practice should be encouraged, since therapeutic measures can mitigate the cardiovascular risk.
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Several possible factors are hypothesized to trigger familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) attacks; however, there is no consensus on this matter. We aimed to identify these triggering factors and analyze their relationship with the Mediterranean fever gene mutation status. We prepared a questionnaire that included the most commonly mentioned possible trigger factors of familial Mediterranean fever. ⋯ Identifying trigger factors can lead to better preventive measures and personalized therapies to decrease familial Mediterranean fever attacks. Patients can significantly decrease the number of familial Mediterranean fever attacks they experience by managing psychological stress and avoiding physical factors such as cold exposure and fatigue. Determining the relationship between trigger factors and patients' Mediterranean fever gene mutation status can lead to personalized therapy for the prevention of familial Mediterranean fever attacks.
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To investigate whether the timing of a previous hospital admission for acute heart failure (AHF) is a prognostic factor for AHF patients revisiting the emergency department (ED) in the subsequent 12-month follow-up. All ED AHF patients enrolled in the previously described EAHFE registry were stratified by the presence or absence of an AHF hospitalization admission in the prior 12 months. The primary outcome was 12-month all-cause mortality post ED visit. ⋯ The 12-month mortality was 37% (41.7% vs. 28.3% p < 0.001), hospital admission was 76.1% (78.8% vs. 71.1% p < 0.001) ACE was 60.2% (65.1% vs. 50.5% p < 0.001). In the adjusted analysis, patients with AHF hospitalization in the prior 12 months had a higher mortality (HR = 1.41; 95% CI 1.27-1.56), 90-day ACE rate (HR = 1.45: 95% CI 1.32-1.59), and more hospital admissions (OR = 1.32; 95% CI 1.16-1.51), with shorter times since the previous hospitalization being related to the outcomes analyzed. One-year mortality, adverse events at 90 days, and readmission rates are increased in ED AHF patients previously admitted within the last 12 months.