2023, Volume 30, Issue 1, pages 1–40

Aortic dissection is often thought of as a rare condition with a poor prognosis and to be the provenance of a few medical specialists. Beyond this misconception, there are further challenges; half of the people who suffer an acute aortic dissection die before reaching hospital,¹ and the number of sufferers is set to double by 2050.¹ As many people suffer an aortic dissection each year as are diagnosed with a brain tumour,² and 7% of people who have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest do so due to an aortic dissection.³

While treatment of patients with an acute dissection is usually undertaken by a few medical specialists, a wide range of healthcare professionals may interact with patients with an aortic dissection. As well as cardiac and vascular surgeons, pre-hospital clinicians, emergency medicine, acute medicine, cardiology and general practice are all likely to encounter patients with aortic dissection.

Education and pathway improvement are key elements of improving outcomes for patients with aortic dissection. It is a great pleasure to share three articles as a partnership between The Aortic Dissection Charitable Trust and British Journal of Cardiology, and in collaboration with the UK-Aortic Society.

The first article is written by Dr Karen Booth who is a Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, and focuses on the epidemiology, pathophysiology and natural history of acute aortic dissection.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) commonly co-exist. Sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors have recently emerged as key disease-modifying therapies for both conditions. In the second half of 2022, EMPA-KIDNEY (Empagliflozin in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease) and DELIVER (Dapagliflozin Evaluation to Improve the LIVEs of Patients With PReserved Ejection Fraction Heart Failure) – two large placebo-controlled trials conducted in these populations – published their main results and expanded the evidence base in patients with and without diabetes. About one-half of each of the trials’ respective populations did not have diabetes at recruitment.^1,2 Importantly, EMPA-KIDNEY represents patients with low levels of kidney function: mean estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of 37 ± 14 ml/min/1.73 m². Both trials’ main reports were accompanied by meta-analyses in The Lancet, ensuring the new results could be reviewed in the context of the totality of evidence.

Calcific aortic valve stenosis (aortic stenosis [AS] characterised by progressive fibro-calcific leaflet remodelling) leading to blood flow restriction is the most frequent structural heart disease, with mortality rates increasing across Europe since 2000. Symptoms are insidious at onset and development of any of the three cardinal symptoms of angina, syncope, or heart failure portend a poor prognosis, with aortic valve replacement (AVR) showing a consistent improvement for both symptom-free and overall survival.

Current guidelines recommend AVR in symptomatic severe AS but the role of AVR in patients with asymptomatic severe or moderate stenosis is evolving. In the last decade the rapid adoption of transcatheter AVR (TAVR) has raised new treatment paradigms for AVR across the spectrum of risk. Opportunities to improve outcomes include earlier diagnosis and a reconsideration of intervention timing in the asymptomatic severe and moderate categories of AS, along with a reconsideration of the patient lifelong aortic valve care plan.

International guidelines recommend multi-disciplinary ‘Heart Teams’ as the preferred clinical method in decision-making¹ for multi-dimensional, pre-procedural work-up: surgical risk evaluation; clinical assessment; multi-modality valve imaging; and coronary disease management. Heart Teams have evolved central to the process, and bear responsibility for offering each patient a tailored approach.² With approximately 5,000 AS patients having not received treatment, over eight months in 2020, following the COVID-19 outbreak (UK TAVR Registry and the National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit),³ there is a need to meet increasing demands and reverse the drop in SAVR/TAVR activity. The authors have reviewed what the future holds for AS management.

Aortic dissection is a life-threatening condition that is often under-recognised. In the first in a series of articles about the condition, the epidemiology, pathology, classification and clinical presentation of aortic dissection are discussed.

Around 100 years ago, the first link between infective endocarditis (IE) and dental procedures was hypothesised; shortly after, physicians began to use antibiotics in an effort to reduce the risk of developing IE. Whether invasive dental procedures are linked to the development of IE, and antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) is effective, have since remained topics of controversy. This controversy, in large part, has been due to the lack of prospective randomised clinical trial data. From this suboptimal position, guideline committees representing different societies and countries have struggled to reach an optimal position on whether AP use is needed for invasive dental procedures (or other procedures) and in whom. We present the findings from an investigation involving a large US patient database, published earlier this year, by Thornhill and colleagues. The work featured the use of both a cohort and case-crossover design and demonstrated there was a significant temporal association between invasive dental procedures and development of IE in high-IE-risk patients. Furthermore, the study showed that AP use was associated with a reduced risk of IE. Additional data, also published this year, from a separate study using nationwide hospital admissions data from England by Thornhill’s group, showed that certain dental and non-dental procedures were significantly associated with the subsequent development of IE. Two other investigations have reported similar concerns for non-dental invasive procedures and risk of IE. Collectively, the results of this work support a re-evaluation of the current position taken by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and other organisations that are responsible for publishing practice guidelines.

Sarcoidosis is a multi-factorial inflammatory disease characterised by the formation of non-caseating granulomas in the affected organs. Cardiac involvement can be the first, and occasionally the only, manifestation of sarcoidosis. The prevalence of cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) is higher than previously suspected. CS is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Thus, early diagnosis is critical to introducing immunosuppressive therapy that could prevent an adverse outcome. Endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) has limited utility in the diagnostic pathway of patients with suspected CS. As a result, advanced imaging modalities, i.e. cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography with ¹⁸F-Fluorodeoxyglucose/computed tomography scan (¹⁸F-FDG-PET/CT), have emerged as alternative tools for diagnosing CS and might be considered the new ‘gold standard’. This focused review will discuss the epidemiology and pathology of CS, when to suspect and evaluate CS, highlight the complementary roles of cardiac MRI and ¹⁸F-FDG-PET/CT, and their diagnostic and prognostic values in CS, in the current content of guidelines for the diagnostic workflow of CS.

Untreated heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) has a one-year mortality rate of 40%. The DAPA-HF trial found that dapagliflozin reduces mortality and heart failure (HF) hospitalisation by 17% and 30%, respectively. We describe the initiation and real-world tolerability of dapagliflozin for the management of HFrEF at a large university teaching hospital in central London.

We reviewed 118 HFrEF patients initiated on dapagliflozin from January to August 2021 in both inpatient and outpatient settings using the Trust’s electronic records. A total of 69 (58.4%) patients were on optimised HF pharmacological therapy upon initiation of dapagliflozin. Dapagliflozin was discontinued in 12 (13.0%) patients. Twenty-three (42.6%) patients either discontinued or had a dose reduction in loop diuretics post-initiation of dapagliflozin.

In clinical practice, early initiation of dapagliflozin is safe, well-tolerated and resulted in earlier discontinuation or dose reduction in loop diuretics, providing opportunities to further optimise other HF medicines. This retrospective observational study supports the safety of the updated European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines to initiate all four key HF medicines to minimise delays in HF treatment optimisation, which could translate to reduced National Health Service healthcare costs through fewer HF hospitalisations.

A 33-year-old woman, with palpitations since the age of 15, was referred to a cardiology consultation due to very frequent ventricular extrasystoles with morphology of left bundle branch block, inferior frontal axis, late precordial transition, rS in V1, R in V6 and rS in DI. She had pectus excavatum. The cardiac magnetic resonance showed severe pectus excavatum associated with exaggerated cardiac levoposition, compression and deformation of the right cardiac chambers. However, the patient became pregnant, and follow-up was delayed.

Low high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) concentration is among the strongest independent risk factors for cardiovascular disease, however, studies to assess the cardioprotective effect of normal or high HDL-C level are lacking.

To determine the prognostic impact of initial serum HDL-C level on in-hospital major adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) and the one-year all-cause mortality in patients presenting with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) we performed a retrospective analysis of the data from 1,415 patients presenting with STEMI in a tertiary-care centre equipped with a 24-hour-ready catheterisation laboratory. The period from June 2014 to June 2017 was reviewed with a follow-up as regards one-year all-cause mortality. Patients were divided into two groups according to HDL-C level. HDL-C <40 mg/dL (2.22 mmol/L) was considered low, while HDL-C ≥40 mg/dL was considered normal.

There were 1,109 patients with low HDL-C, while 306 had normal HDL-C levels, which was statistically significant (p<0.001). Total MACCE and all-cause mortality were significantly lower in patients with normal HDL-C (p=0.03 and p=0.01, respectively).

In conclusion, this retrospective study to assess the prognostic effect of HDL-C in patients presenting with STEMI, found normal HDL-C level was associated with lower in-hospital MACCE and all-cause mortality at one-year follow-up.