TOP MEDICAL NEWS 05/SEP/2023 - Video

Best of ESC Congress 2023

More than 30,000 health professionals from 175 countries attended this year’s meeting, 24,000 onsite and 6,000 online. Novel findings were revealed in more than 3,750 abstracts and clinical cases presented by scientists from 86 countries.

Practice-changing research was presented throughout the congress, with major new findings in the Hot Lines. The Hot Line programme kicked off with STEP-HFpEF Next up was NOAH-AFNET 6, which showed that anticoagulants cause bleeding without preventing stroke in patients with atrial high-rate episodes (AHRE), but without electrocardiogram (ECG)-diagnosed atrial fibrillation. Rounding off Hot Line session 1 was COP-AF, a trial in patients undergoing major non-cardiac thoracic surgery, which found that colchicine does not significantly reduce perioperative atrial fibrillation or myocardial injury after non-cardiac surgery.

Ref: ESC Congress 2023

Higher BMI Linked to Heart Damage during Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer patients

A recent study in the North-East region of Colombia found 11.94% of patients with a high BMI being treated for breast cancer at a regional center experienced heart damage, or cardiotoxicity, during chemotherapy.

An anonymized database of breast cancer patients who started chemotherapy with doxorubicin or trastuzumab between January and December 2021 was used for the study. The analysis only included patients who had a baseline echocardiogram and at least one follow-up echocardiogram. The database also recorded sociodemographic, oncological, cardiovascular and echocardiographic variables.

Ref: ACC

Impact of COVID-19 vaccination on mortality after acute myocardial infarction

The adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccine have mostly been mild, transient and self-limiting. However, concerns have been raised regarding the cardiovascular adverse effects of these vaccines. Any side effect can have catastrophic effect especially in large densely populated countries such as India.

A recent study conducted in collaboration with researchers from G.B. Pant Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, ESIC Medical College and Hospital and Delhi Cancer Registry has shown that COVID-19 vaccines decreases all-cause mortality at 30 days and six months following acute myocardial infarction or AMI.

Ref: Mohit D. Gupta et al, Plos One

Published: September 1, 2023

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291090