The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery
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J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. · Oct 2019
Determinants of acute events leading to mortality after shunt procedure in univentricular palliation.
The study objective was to identify determinants of adverse outcomes in patients undergoing univentricular palliation after the shunt procedure. ⋯ More than one-fifth of patients shunted during univentricular palliation die before the second stage. The majority of these deaths are associated with acute events occurring early after surgery. Strategies to improve survival should focus on prevention and management of acute events.
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The current guidelines do not consider chronic type A aortic dissection as one of the triggers for prophylactic aortic repair, and an aortic diameter of 55 mm is considered the threshold for surgery. ⋯ In unrepaired chronic type A aortic dissection, aortic events were not infrequent even for patients with an aortic diameter of less than 55 mm. This finding indicates that there may be a need to lower the surgical threshold for chronic type A aortic dissection.
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J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. · Oct 2019
The Thoracic Surgery Social Media Network: Early experience and lessons learned.
The Thoracic Surgery Social Media Network (TSSMN) is a social media collaborative formed in 2015 by The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery to bring social media attention to key publications from both journals and to highlight major accomplishments in the specialty. Our aim is to describe TSSMN's preliminary experience and lessons learned. ⋯ We demonstrate that TSSMN further enhances the ability for the journals to connect with their readership and the cardiothoracic community. Ongoing studies to correlate social media attention with article reads, article-level metrics, citations, and journal impact factor are eagerly awaited.
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J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. · Oct 2019
Cumulative nonsmoking risk factors increase the probability of developing lung cancer.
It is estimated that 20% of lung cancer cases in the United States are among never smokers, yet current screening recommendations only include a small subset of high-risk patients. In this study, 2 models were used to predict the risk of developing lung cancer in subgroups of never smoking patients with additional risk variables. ⋯ Models such as LLP and PLCO might be used to identify risk for patients who would otherwise not receive lung cancer screening. These individual risk assessments can be used by patients and providers to assess if one is at substantial risk for developing lung cancer.
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J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. · Oct 2019
Do annuloplasty rings designed to treat ischemic/functional mitral regurgitation alter left-ventricular dimensions in the acutely ischemic ovine heart?
To quantify the effects of annuloplasty rings designed to treat ischemic/functional mitral regurgitation on left ventricular septal-lateral (S-L) and commissure-commissure (C-C) dimensions. ⋯ Despite radical reduction of mitral annular size, disease-specific ischemic/functional mitral regurgitation annuloplasty rings do not induce relevant changes of left ventricular dimensions in the acutely ischemic ovine heart.