BACKGROUND Volatile anesthetics provide myocardial preconditioning in coronary surgery patients. We hypothesized that sevoflurane compared with propofol reduces the incidence of myocardial ischemia in patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery. METHODS AND RESULTS We enrolled 385 patients at cardiovascular risk in 3 centers. Patients were randomized to maintenance of anesthesia with sevoflu...

Background—Volatile anesthetics provide myocardial preconditioning in coronary surgery patients. We hypothesized that sevoflurane compared with propofol reduces the incidence of myocardial ischemia in patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery. Methods and Results—We enrolled 385 patients at cardiovascular risk in 3 centers. Patients were randomized to maintenance of anesthesia with sevoflura...

BACKGROUND Although the maze procedure reduces the risk of adverse cardiac events, the clinical importance of post-maze left atrial (LA) activity on long-term surgical outcomes is not well defined. METHODS AND RESULTS Between January 2000 and December 2009, 416 consecutive patients with sinus conversion after a modified Cox III procedure with cryoablation were enrolled and subdivided into pat...

Background/Introduction Predicting major adverse events and death in patients undergoing cardiac surgery is based on clinical risk scores such as Euroscore. This score has a moderate power for discriminating morbidity. Natriuretic peptides are wellestablished biomarkers in numerous clinical settings, prognostic, diagnostic and treatment of cardiac failure. In cardiac surgical patients the role ...

BACKGROUND Tiotropium is an anticholinergic bronchodilator for symptom relief and reducing exacerbations with an established safety profile in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Using data from the 4-year Understanding Potential Long-term Impacts on Function with Tiotropium (UPLIFT®) study, we re-evaluated the safety of tiotropium HandiHaler® in patients who experienced...

lion recipients were reported; the next day, after noting that only 200,000 additional persons had received vaccine, the total swelled to 4.4 million (9). These data reflect the difficulties intrinsic to managing such a massive program. The discrepancy may simply be a case of not adding columns of numbers in a systematic way; however, the fuzzy numbers do have a certain appeal to the modern, mo...

BACKGROUND In patients with sarcoidosis, sudden death is a leading cause of mortality, which may represent unrecognized cardiac involvement. Delayed-enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance (DE-CMR) can detect minute amounts of myocardial damage. We sought to compare DE-CMR with standard clinical evaluation for the identification of cardiac involvement. METHODS AND RESULTS Eighty-one con...