Cardiac Surgery in Jehovah's Witnesses: 329 Consecutive Cases.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to describe the outcome of Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) undergoing cardiac surgery at the authors' center. DESIGN: A single-center retrospective cohort study. SETTING: At a cardiovascular center with a tertiary intensive care unit (ICU) and specific experience with cardiac surgery in JWs. The institutional protocol describing all perioperative care in JWs has been applied for 21 years. PARTICIPANTS: All JWs undergoing cardiac surgery in the Amphia Hospital from January 1, 2001 to January 31, 2022. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The study cohort comprised 329 JWs undergoing cardiac surgery. Twenty-three patients (6.8%) were treated preoperatively for anemia. The mean European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation score was 5.1 (range 0-18). Coronary artery bypass grafting (53.2%) was performed most frequently, followed by aortic valve replacement (13.4%). Mean preoperative hemoglobin levels were 14.5 g/dL (range 9.8-18.5 g/dL), dropping to 11.6 g/dL (range 6.6-15.6 g/dL) at hospital discharge. Mean blood loss was 439 ± 349 mL in the first 12 hours postsurgery. Maximum mean postoperative troponin levels were 431 ± 424 ng/L. Resternotomy and postoperative myocardial infarction occurred in 3.6% and 4.2% of patients, respectively. On average, patients had an ICU stay of 1.4 ± 1.8 days and a hospital stay of 6.8 ± 4.2 days. Hospital mortality was 0.6% and was related to cardiac failure. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that cardiac surgery in JWs is safe when adhering to a strict perioperative patient blood management protocol.

Coronary artery disease in heart transplantation: new concepts for an old disease.

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) remains one of the main long-term complications after heart transplantation. We performed a systematic review focused on articles published in the previous 6 years to reappraise the novel evidences supporting risk factors, pathology, prevention, and treatment of CAV. We identified a search string for a literature search on PubMed. We excluded articles specifically focused on diagnosis/biomarkers/imaging only or complications of other diseases. We included 98 studies out of our search. Forty-eight articles describe risk factors for CAV, 13 pathology, 24 prevention, and 13 treatment for CAV. While confirming known concepts, we found supportive evidence that CAV pathophysiology may vary according to the time post-transplant and the prevalence of metabolic versus immune-mediated risk factors. Selective revascularization of focal lesions in patients with CAV may result in some clinical benefit, but CAV prevention, rather than treatment, by controlling risk factors and by using targeted immunosuppressive therapies is the most evidence-based approach to reduce disease progression.