Cardiovascular events in patients with chronic kidney disease / 中华心血管病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>Cardiovascular event is common and is an important cause of death for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The purpose of current study is to analyze the related risk factors of cardiovascular event in patients with CKD.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Clinical data from 557 patients with CKD (stage III-V) who hospitalized in our hospital from Jan 2006 to Dec 2006 were retrospectively analyzed focusing on the risk factors of cardiovascular event and their impacts on death.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Among the 557 patients with CKD, 332 were male and 225 were female. There were totally 163 patients (163/557, 29.3%) suffered from cardiovascular events during hospitalization. The independent risk factors for cardiovascular event were age, history of coronary heart disease, anemia and fasting blood glucose level. The mortality was significantly higher in patients suffered from cardiovascular events than that in patients without cardiovascular events (9.82% vs. 2.28%, P<0.001).</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>For patients with CKD, anemia is another independent risk factor for cardiovascular events besides traditional risk factors and the mortality was significantly higher in CKD patients with cardiovascular events compared to CKD patients without cardiovascular events.</p>

The clinical features and outcomes of immunoglobulin light-chain amyloidosis with heart involvement / 中华心血管病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To analyze the clinical features and outcomes of patients with immunoglobulin light-chain amyloidosis (AL) who had heart involvement.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Clinical features and outcomes of AL amyloidosis patients with heart involvement in the past 7 years in our hospital were retrospectively analyzed.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Cardiac involvement was seen in 36 out of the 60 AL patients (60%). The clinical manifestations of cardiac amyloidosis included heart failure (50%), low QRS voltage (47.2%) and pseudomyocardial infarction (33.3%) in electrocardiography, as well as thickening of ventricular wall (63.9%), echo of granular sparkling texture (11.1%), atria dilation (33.3%) and diastolic dysfunction (30.6%) in echocardiography. The prognosis was poor, with a median survival time of 13.9 months.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Patients of AL amyloidosis with cardiac involvement are not rare. Thickening of ventricular wall and diastolic dysfunction are the most common characteristics. Special attention should be paid to this disease.</p>