No abstract

No abstract

Background Recently, the COMPASS trial demonstrated that dual therapy reduced cardiovascular outcomes compared with aspirin alone in patients with stable atherosclerotic disease. Methods and Results We sought to assess the proportion of patients eligible for the COMPASS trial and to compare the epidemiology and outcome of these patients with those without COMPASS inclusion or with any exclusion criteria in a contemporary, nationwide cohort of patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Among the 4068 patients with detailed information allowing evaluation of eligibility, 1416 (34.8%) did not fulfill the inclusion criteria (COMPASS-Not-Included), 841 (20.7%) had exclusion criteria (COMPASS-Excluded) and the remaining 1811 (44.5%) were classified as COMPASS-Like. At 1 year, the incidence of major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE), a composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction and stroke, was 0.9% in the COMPASS-Not-Included and 2.0% in the COMPASS-Like (p = 0.01), and 5.0% in the COMPASS-Excluded group (p < 0.0001 for all comparisons). Among the COMPASS-Like population, patients with multiple COMPASS enrichment criteria presented a significant increase in the risk of MACE (from 1.0% to 3.3% in those with 1 and ≥3 criteria, respectively; p = 0.012), and a modest absolute increase in major bleeding risk (from 0.2% to 0.4%, respectively; p = 0.46). Conclusions In a contemporary real-world cohort registry of stable CAD, most patients resulted as eligible for the COMPASS. These patients presented a considerable annual risk of MACE that consistently increases in the presence of multiple risk factors.

It is known that the prognosis of patients affected by light-chain (AL) or transthyretin-related (TTR) amyloidosis is poor. TTR amyloidosis has usually shown a slower progression than AL amyloidosis, both hereditary TTR amyloidosis, where there is an inherited mutation in the DNA, and wild-type TTR amyloidosis, which usually affects the elderly. In this paper, the current literature about heart transplantation on cardiac amyloidosis patients is extensively reviewed. The two most frequent types of cardiac amyloidosis have been considered for heart transplantation: AL amyloidosis and wild-type TTR amyloidosis. According to this analysis, it is reasonable that heart transplantation may represent a valuable option in carefully selected patients. Moreover, it could improve prognosis, enabling autologous stem cell transplantation in the AL amyloidosis subgroup. In our humble opinion, it is mandatory to define a multidisciplinary approach to help select candidates to obtain the most effective results.

No abstract