The clinical value and cost-effectiveness of treatments for patients with coronary artery disease.

BACKGROUND: The clinical value and cost-effectiveness of invasive treatments for patients with coronary artery disease is unclear. Invasive treatments such as coronary artery bypass grafting and percutaneous coronary intervention are frequently used as a starting treatment, yet they are much more costly than optimal medical therapy. While patients may transition into other treatments over time, the choices of starting treatments are likely important determinants of costs and health outcomes. The aim is to predict by how much costs and health outcomes will change from a decision to use different starting treatments for patients with coronary artery disease in an Asian setting. METHODS: A cost-effectiveness study using a Markov model informed by data from Singapore General Hospital was done. All patients with initial presentations of stable coronary disease and no acute coronary syndromes who received medical treatments and interventional therapies were included. We compare existing practice, where the starting treatment can be medical therapy or stent percutaneous coronary interventions or coronary artery bypass grafting, with alternate starting treatment strategies. RESULTS: When compared to 'existing practice' a policy of starting 14% of patients with coronary artery bypass grafting and 86% with optimal medical therapy showed savings of $1,743 per patient and 0.23 additional quality adjusted life years. A change to policy nationwide would save $10 million and generate 1,380 quality adjusted life years. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing coronary artery bypass grafting and use of medical therapy in the setting of coronary artery disease is likely to saves costs and improve health outcomes. A definitive study to address the question we investigate would be very difficult to undertake and so using existing data to model the expected outcomes is a useful tool. There are likely to be large and complex barriers to the implementation of any policy change based on the findings of this study.

Is a novel diagnostic pathway for cardiology outpatient clinics in Singapore lower cost than existing practice: a cost modelling study.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the potential for change to costs from a decision to adopt a novel diagnostic pathway for referrals to cardiology outpatients with symptoms of chest pain. DESIGN: Costs modelling study using existing observational data, with a cost year of 2018. SETTING: Specialist Heart Centre in Singapore. PARTICIPANTS: All new referrals (n=10 622) to the outpatient clinics for investigation between January 2017 and December 2017. INTERVENTIONS: Two competing testing regimes are compared in a decision tree model. Current practice includes classification of patients by their risk and the use of treadmill tests, calcium scores, functional testing and CT angiogram. New practice offers a fundamental difference in use of diagnostics for patients, with some offered angiogram directly and for low-risk patients a calcium score is used to refine risk stratification. OUTCOME MEASURES: The expected cost difference between testing alternatives. RESULTS: The expected cost saving from 'New Practice' as compared with 'Current Practice' is $S764 per patient. There is a 50% probability the savings per patient range between $S764 and $S824 and a 90% probability they are between $S616 and $S912. The expected savings to Singapore national health services are $S26.8 million annually, with a range of $S16.2 to $S41.1 million. CONCLUSIONS: We find some evidence that using a coronary calcium score, which can be performed with a fraction of the time and cost of a CT coronary angiogram, saves costs to health services.

Clinical- and omics-based models of subclinical atherosclerosis in healthy Chinese adults: a cross-sectional exploratory study.

BACKGROUND: Classical risk factors, such as fasting cholesterol, blood pressure (BP), and diabetes status are used today to predict the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, accurate prediction remains limited, particularly in low-risk groups such as women and younger individuals. Growing evidence suggests that biomarker concentrations following consumption of a meal challenge are better and earlier predictors of disease development than biomarker concentrations. OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that postprandial responses of circulating biomarkers differ between healthy subjects with and without subclinical atherosclerosis (SA) in an Asian population at low risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). METHODS: One hundred healthy Chinese subjects (46 women, 54 men) completed the study. Subjects consumed a mixed-meal test and 164 blood biomarkers were analyzed over 6 h by using a combination of chemical and NMR techniques. Models were trained using different methodologies (including logistic regression, elastic net, random forest, sparse partial least square) on a random 75% subset of the data, and their performance was evaluated on the remaining 25%. RESULTS: We found that models based on baseline clinical parameters or fasting biomarkers could not reliably predict SA. By contrast, an omics model based on magnitude and timing of postprandial biomarkers achieved high performance [receiving operating characteristic (ROC) AUC: 91%; 95% CI: 77, 100). Investigation of key features of this model enabled derivation of a considerably simpler model, solely based on postprandial BP and age, with excellent performance (AUC: 91%; 95% CI: 78, 100). CONCLUSION: We report a novel model to detect SA based on postprandial BP and age in a population of Asian subjects at low risk of CAD. The use of this model in large-scale CVD prevention programs should be explored. This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT03531879.

Rate or Rhythm Control of Atrial Fibrillation - Pearls for the Internist

Atrial fibrillation is an epidemic in Asia that is increasingly prevalent. Apart from stroke risk stratification and management of anticoagulation, physicians managing this group of patients also need to determine an optimal strategy in terms of rate or rhythm control. With new techniques of catheter ablation to maintain patients in sinus rhythm, patients with atrial fibrillation now have more options for treatment, on top of pharmacological methods. This paper aims to review the current evidence for rate and rhythm control in both general patients and subgroups of interest commonly encountered in clinical practices such as obesity, heart failure and thyroid disease.

Surgical management of minor salivary gland tumors / 临床耳鼻咽喉头颈外科杂志

OBJECTIVE@#To study the clinical features of minor salivary gland tumors and to discuss the treatment modalities for these tumors.@*METHOD@#Retrospective analysis of 54 cases with minor salivary gland tumor operated in our hospital from 1997 to 2004.@*RESULT@#Among 54 cases with minor salivary gland tumors in this series, 16 patients lost of follow up. Among the remaining 38 patients, 2 patients with nasal cavity adenoid cystic carcinoma died of tumor recurrence 2 and 3 years after the surgery respectively, one patient with laryngeal myoepithelial carcinoma died of tumor recurrence 3 years after the surgery and one patient with paranasal sinus mucoepidermoid carcinoma died of recurrence 17 months after the surgery. Two patients with paranasal sinus adenoid cystic carcinoma recurred after the primary surgery and were survived without tumor after salvage surgery. The other patients survived with no tumor recurrence.@*CONCLUSION@#While different histopathology of minor salivary gland tumors were found in this group, malignant tumors were predominant, accounting for 81.4%. The choice of treatment for minor salivary gland tumors depends upon the location and the histopathology of the tumors. The treatment policy for benign tumors is simple tumor excision, while that for malignant tumors is surgery combined with pre- or post-operative radiation therapy. Complete surgical resection of tumor masses and tumor free margin is essential for successful treatment of malignant minor salivary gland tumors.