Background. Heart failure (HF) is characterized by unfavorable prognosis. Disease trajectory of HF, however, may vary, and risk assessment of patients remains elusive. In our study, we sought to determine the prognostic impact of endocan—a novel biomarker of endothelial dysfunction and low-grade inflammation—in patients with heart failure. Methods. In outpatients with chronic HF, baseline values of endocan were determined and clinical follow-up for a minimum of 18 months obtained. A multivariate Cox proportional hazard model was built for HF-related death or hospitalization requiring inotropic support. Results. A total of 120 patients (mean age 71 years, 64% male, mean LVEF 36%) were included. During a mean follow-up of 656±109 days, 50 patients (41.6%) experienced an event. On Cox multivariate analysis, endocan values emerged as an independent predictor of HF prognosis (HR, 1.471 CI 95% 1.183-1.829, p=0.001, for each 1 ng/mL increase) even after adjustment for age, gender, HF etiology, LVEF, NYHA class, NT-proBNP, and exercise tolerance. Conclusions. Endocan is an independent predictor of HF-related events in chronic HF individuals and represents a promising tool for risk assessment of HF patients.

The results of this study do not support the effectiveness of ascorbic acid supplementation in reducing the incidence of postoperative atrial fibrillation in elective on-pump CABG patients.

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Purpose: Internationally-accepted standards have been developed for a range of tests and parameters for characterising the in-vitro interactions of biomaterials with blood. However, there are, as yet, no standards concerning the size, design and type of such in-vitro testing systems (1). Since the development of hemocompatible biomaterials provides a very important challenge in material science, there is a need for further progress in finding reliable and standardized methods for hemocompatibility testing (2). The aim of this research was to introduce a method for analyzing the hemocompatibility of different chemically-modified surfaces. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), with surface modifications using differentpolysaccharides and their derivatives, were chosen because of their promising biocompatible properties and numerous potential biomedical applications.Methods: A modified hemoglobin-free method was used to determine the antithrombogenicity of the modified PET surfaces (4). The method was optimized for shaking rate, the addition of buffer, and blood temperature to decrease measuring errors. Five differently-modified PET surfaces were analyzed: chemically pre-treated PET and PET treated with chitosan, fucoidan, sulphated chitosan and heparin. Glass was used as a standard thrombogenic surface.Results: The results showed that a lower shaking rate, the addition of buffer, and blood cooling prior to measurement significantly decreased the standard deviation of the measurement results by a total of about 89 %.Conclusions: We believe this optimized hemoglobinfree method is suitable for distinguishing between chemically and structurally-different surfaces, such as glass and PET. The differences between PET surfaces coated with different polysaccharides were, however, less pronounced.

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