Heart Surgery News and Research

RSS

Heart surgery is done to correct problems with the heart. More than half a million heart surgeries are done each year in the United States for a variety of heart problems. Heart surgery is used to correct heart problems in children and adults. This article discusses heart surgeries for adults. For more information about heart surgeries for children, see the Diseases and Conditions Index articles on congenital heart defects, holes in the heart, and tetralogy of Fallot.

The most common type of heart surgery for adults is coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). During CABG, surgeons use healthy arteries or veins taken from another part of the body to bypass (that is, go around) blocked arteries. CABG relieves chest pain and reduces the risk of heart attack.

Frequent TAVR to replace damaged aortic heart valve improves patient outcomes

The more frequently a hospital performs a minimally invasive technique called transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR, to replace a damaged aortic heart valve, the better patients fare, on average, immediately after the procedure, researchers reported at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

4 Apr 2016

CCN5 protein reverses cardiac fibrosis in heart failure models

CCN5, a matricellular protein, has been found to reverse established cardiac fibrosis in heart failure models, according to a study led by Roger J. Hajjar, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Woo Jin Park, PhD, Professor of Life Sciences at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea.

29 Mar 2016

Children with cardiomyopathy may benefit from family-linked treatment

A newly published national study by the Children's Hospital of Michigan and Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers shows that "parental impact and family functioning" become increasingly abnormal when children with cardiomyopathy-related chronic heart disease are more severely ill than children less affected by the disease.

24 Mar 2016

Mount Sinai Hospital uses M1 LUMI Bead loaded with doxorubicin for liver cancer treatment

An innovative cancer treatment made of luminescent chemotherapy-filled beads injected into tumors through the wrist is now available for patients with inoperable and difficult-to-treat liver cancer.

23 Mar 2016

Light therapy lessens depressive symptoms among cancer survivors

Light therapy decreased depressive symptoms and normalized circadian rhythms among cancer survivors, according to new research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai presented today at the American Psychosomatic Society in Denver, CO.

11 Mar 2016

Hematopoietic reprogramming can lead to differentiated blood products for cell-replacement therapy

Building upon previous work, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai identified cells in the embryos of mice that are precursors to blood stem cells or hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells.

9 Mar 2016

Low level of physical fitness in early life associated with Type 2 Diabetes risk in adulthood

The combination of low aerobic capacity and low muscle strength at age 18 is associated with a three times greater risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes in adulthood, according to new research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published online today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

8 Mar 2016

New study sheds light on challenges in addressing post-operative bleeding in newborns

A new study finds significant differences between the blood clot structure in adults and newborns, helping researchers better understand the challenges in addressing post-operative bleeding in neonatal patients.

7 Mar 2016

CHLA cardiologists perform rare fetal cardiac intervention procedure

Last August, when Children's Hospital Los Angeles cardiologists confirmed that the heart of a 27-week-old fetus suffered from a critical cardiac condition that prevented blood returning from the fetus's lungs from circulating back into the body, they told the parents that their child faced certain open-heart surgery after birth. Even worse, babies born with this very rare condition—hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) with restrictive atrial septum—have a 50 percent neonatal mortality rate.

27 Feb 2016

New BayCare Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery office opens at St. Anthony's Hospital

To improve access to high-quality, advanced cardiac surgery services in St. Petersburg and south Pinellas County, BayCare Health System has opened a BayCare Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery office at St. Anthony's Hospital.

24 Feb 2016

ACC, AHA support implementation of proposed cardiovascular measures, with reservations

Quality measures announced today by the Core Quality Measures Collaborative represent a step forward in reducing paperwork and confusion while also allowing providers to focus on measures that impact patient outcomes, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) said in support of implementation of the proposed cardiovascular measures. But the groups expressed reservations about blood pressure targets included in the measures.

17 Feb 2016

New methodology could spare kids from unnecessary heart surgery

What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than help save a child's heart? That's what Vittoria Flamini, an industry assistant professor in Tandon's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has in mind.

15 Feb 2016

Higher intake of food-based vitamin D during pregnancy linked to reduced risk of allergies in children

Higher intake of foods containing vitamin D during pregnancy - but not supplemental vitamin D intake - was associated with reduced risk of development of allergies in children, according to a study led by an investigator from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published today in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

11 Feb 2016

New drug cocktail may show promise in NSCLC patients

A drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for melanoma in combination with a common cholesterol-lowering drug may show promise in controlling cancer growth in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to new research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

3 Feb 2016

Mount Sinai researchers report new method to restore microbiome of newborns delivered via C-section

Scientists from the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, collaborating with NYU Langone Medical Center and a multi-center team of researchers, demonstrated for the first time that the microbiome of newborn babies delivered via cesarean section (C-section) can be partially restored to resemble that of vaginally delivered infants.

2 Feb 2016

Heart surgery patients who receive home visits from PAs less likely to be readmitted to hospital

Two home visits by a physician's assistant (PA) during the week after hospital discharge significantly reduces the chance that a heart surgery patient will be readmitted, and reduces overall costs associated with the heart surgery, according to a scientific presentation at the 52nd Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

27 Jan 2016

Mount Sinai Heart starts TANSNIP-PESA study to determine how workplace-based lifestyle intervention reduces CV risk

World-renowned cardiologist Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, is undertaking a three-year study, known as the TANSNIP-PESA study, to determine whether a workplace-based lifestyle intervention, accompanied by imaging data, will lead to a reduction in the prevalence of cardiovascular (CV) disease risk factors related to lifestyle.

19 Jan 2016

Using statins before and after heart surgery can help reduce cardiac complications, mortality risks

Using statins before and after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery can help reduce cardiac complications, such as atrial fibrillation, following surgery and also can reduce the risk of death during and after surgery, according to a review article posted online today by The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

13 Jan 2016

Occlutech's Atrial Septal Defect Closure Device approved in Japan

Occlutech, a leading innovator of implants to treat structural heart disease today announced that it has obtained Japanese MHW approval for its dedicated Atrial Septal Defect Closure Device. The device is a specifically designed implant indicated for the minimally invasive closure of Atrial Septal Defects, ASD.

12 Jan 2016

Chromoendoscopy superior to other surveillance methods in detecting dysplasia in IBD patients

Chromoendoscopy is superior to random biopsy or white-light colonoscopy in detecting dysplasia in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), according to a long-term surveillance study led by James F. Marion, MD, Professor of Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Director of Education and Outreach at The Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital, published online in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

11 Jan 2016