Jack E. Juni

A randomized controlled trial of hospital discharge three days after myocardial infarction in the era of reperfusion.

To evaluate the feasibility and cost savings of hospital discharge three days after acute myocardial infarction, we screened 507 consecutive patients prospectively for clinical complications and exercise-test performance. Of 179 patients whose condition was classified as uncomplicated (no angina, heart failure, or arrhythmia 72 hours after admission), 126 underwent early exercise testing and 90 had no provocable myocardial ischemia. Eighty of these patients were randomly assigned to early (day 3) or conventional (days 7 to 10) hospital discharge. Seventy-six of them had received coronary reperfusion therapy (thrombolysis, angioplasty, or both). At six months of follow-up, there were no deaths or new ventricular aneurysms, and the early-discharge and conventional-discharge groups had similar numbers of hospital readmissions (6 and 10), reinfarctions (none and 5), and patients with angina (3 and 8). In the early-discharge group, 25 of 29 previously employed patients returned to work 40.7 +/- 21.9 days (mean +/- SD) after admission, as compared with 25 of 27 patients in the conventional-discharge group, who returned to work after a mean of 56.9 +/- 30.3 days (P = 0.054). The mean cumulative hospital and professional charges were

Radionuclide assessment of left ventricular diastolic filling in diabetes mellitus with and without cardiac autonomic neuropathy

12,546 +/- 3,034 in the early-discharge group, as compared with

Effects of hepatic arterial yttrium 90 glass microspheres in dogs

17,868 +/- 3,688 in the conventional-discharge group (P less than 0.0001). In carefully selected patients with uncomplicated myocardial infarction, hospital discharge after three days is feasible and leads to a substantial reduction in hospital charges. Before this strategy can be widely recommended, however, its safety must be confirmed in larger prospective clinical trials.

Natural history and determinants of conduction defects following coronary artery bypass surgery

Indexes of left ventricular diastolic filling were measured by radionuclide ventriculography in 28 patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus without evidence of ischemic heart disease. Six patients (21%) had abnormal diastolic filling and differed from diabetic patients with normal filling in their greater severity of cardiac autonomic neuropathy, assessed by noninvasive means, and their lower plasma norepinephrine levels in the supine (131.1 +/- 24.7 versus 356.2 +/- 58.4 pg/ml, p less than 0.01) and upright (224.9 +/- 47.8 versus 673.3 +/- 122.3 pg/ml, p less than 0.005) positions. The diabetic patients determined as having cardiac autonomic neuropathy (n = 15) had depressed left ventricular diastolic filling compared with subjects free of autonomic neuropathy, whether measured as the time to peak filling rate (154.2 +/- 12.0 versus 119.1 +/- 10.6 ms, p less than 0.05) or the time to peak filling rate normalized to the cardiac cycle length (24.3 +/- 2.2 versus 16.2 +/- 1.5%, p less than 0.01). Of the various tests of autonomic nervous system function, the strongest correlate of impaired diastolic filling was orthostasis, measured as the decrease in systolic blood pressure with standing (r = 0.584, p less than 0.001). Thus, in patients with diabetes mellitus, alterations in sympathetic nervous system activity are associated with abnormalities of left ventricular diastolic filling.

Treatment of Wilson's disease with zinc. II: Validation of oral 64copper with copper balance

A 22‐μm glass microsphere called TheraSphere (Theragenics Corp., Atlanta, GA) has been developed in which yttrium 89 oxide is incorporated into the glass matrix and is activated by neutron bombardment to form the beta‐emitting isotope yttrium 90 (Y 90) before using the spheres as radiotherapeutic vehicles. The injection of up to 12 times (on a liver weight basis) the anticipated human dose of nonradioactive TheraSphere into the hepatic arteries of dogs was well tolerated and produced clinically silent alterations within centrolobular areas. The hepatic arterial (HA) injection of radioactive TheraSphere also produced portal changes similar to those observed in humans after external beam therapy. While the extent of damage increased with the delivered dose, radiation exposures in excess of 30,000 cGy did not cause total hepatic necrosis and were compatible with survival. No microspheres distributed to the bone marrow and absolutely no myelosuppression was encountered in any animal. Proposed hepatic exposures to humans of 5000 to 10,000 cGy by means of these microspheres, therefore, would appear to be feasible and tolerable. Radiotherapeutic microsphere administration preceded by regional infusion of a radiosensitizing agent and/or immediately following the redistribution of blood flow toward intrahepatic tumor by vasoactive agents can potentially yield a synergistic, highly selective attack on tumors confined to the liver.

Infarct vessel status after intravenous tissue plasminogen activator and acute coronary angioplasty: Prediction of clinical outcome

Ninety-three consecutive patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) were followed prospectively to ascertain the natural history and determinants of new postoperative conduction defects. Each patient was followed in the postoperative period with serial electrocardiograms and continuous monitoring. In the last 70 patients, a technetium pyrophosphate scan was obtained 48 to 72 hours after operation. Postoperatively, new bundle-branch or fascicular block developed in 42 patients (45%) and third-degree atrioventricular (AV) block, in 4 (4%). The occurrence was compared with patient age, preoperative bundle-branch block or fascicular block, number of diseased arteries, number of bypassed arteries, total time of cardiopulmonary bypass, aortic cross-clamping time, occurrence of a preoperative or perioperative myocardial infarction, and presence of disease in the left anterior descending or right coronary artery. Only the number of bypassed arteries, the total time of cardiopulmonary bypass, and the aortic cross-clamping time were related to the development of postoperative conduction defects (all, p less than .05). The conduction defect resolved partially or completely by the time of hospital discharge in 54% of patients. In the 4 patients with third-degree AV block, AV block resolved on postoperative day 2 in 1 patient and resolved transiently for up to 5 days or persisted in 3 patients. At two months of follow-up, all 3 patients discharged in third-degree AV block with a permanent pacemaker were no longer in AV block. In conclusion, following CABG, the occurrence of new AV conduction defects is related to the number of vessels bypassed, the cardiopulmonary bypass pump time, and the aortic cross-clamping time.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Detection and sizing of myocardial ischemia and infarction by nuclear magnetic resonance imaging in the canine heart.

The efficacy of zinc as a therapeutic agent to control copper balance in Wilsons disease patients has been previously documented with balance studies. In an attempt to develop a simpler and faster tool for evaluating the adequacy of zinc therapy, a technique that measures the uptake into blood of a small oral dose of 64copper was studied in conjuction with copper balance. The mean peak 64copper uptake into blood of nine Wilsons disease patients on D-penicillamine, trien, or no medication was 6.04 ± 2.74%, comparable with normal controls. Seven patients on zinc therapy had a markedly and significantly reduced mean uptake of 0.79 ± 1.05% after treatment. The data demonstrate that the prevention of copper uptake into blood in Wilsons disease patients by zinc therapy can be evaluated by 64copper uptake and that peak uptakes of less than 1% occur in patients with neutral or negative copper balance.

Procedure Guideline for Brain Perfusion SPECT Using 99m Tc Radiopharmaceuticals 3.0

To determine the risk of arterial reocclusion or recurrent ischemia after acute intervention in myocardial infarction, we analyzed the results of coronary arteriography performed acutely and at 1 week in 50 consecutive patients who received acute intervention. Successful recanalization of the infarct vessel was achieved in 46 (92%) patients after therapy with intravenous tissue plasminogen activator, percutaneous coronary angioplasty, or both. Follow-up angiography in 44 showed early reocclusion in 10 patients (23%). Intermittent patency during acute arteriography was always associated with reocclusion; suboptimal (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction [TIMI] class 2) flow was associated with a 50% rate of reocclusion. Although residual stenosis of greater than 50% alone was not predictive of rethrombosis, 90% of all reocclusions were associated with either stenosis greater than 50%, TIMI 2 flow, or intermittent patency. Absence of these angiographic risk factors predicted a 95% patency rate at follow-up. In-hospital cardiac complications occurred in 17 of 23 (74%) patients with residual stenosis of greater than 50% (death in four, ischemia in 13), and late revascularization was required in 53% of survivors. Only 15% of the group with less than 50% stenosis had an in-hospital ischemic event (p less than 0.001). Thus, after acute intervention, an infarct vessel with intermittent patency or suboptimal flow is associated with a high rate of reocclusion. Residual stenosis greater than or equal to 50% appears to predict a high incidence of negative in-hospital clinical outcomes and the need for subsequent revascularization.

Quantitative scintigraphy with deconvolutional analysis for the dynamic measurement of hepatic function

The usefulness of NMR imaging to size infarcted and hypoperfused, ischemic myocardium was assessed in 16 dogs which underwent coronary artery occlusion and reperfusion. During occlusion, technetium-99 microspheres were injected into the left atrium. Following death, the hearts were excised and underwent NMR imaging with a 0.35 tesla magnet, using multiple spin-echo pulse sequences. The epicardium of the heart was marked to indicate the level of the NMR cross-sectional tomographic image. The heart was subsequently breadloafed into 5 mm sections and the corresponding NMR cross-section was flagged for analysis. Autoradiography was performed to measure the hypoperfused, at-risk zone, and triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining was used to measure infarct size. For the flagged tomographic slice, the size of the NMR abnormality correlated well (r = 0.95), and was comparable to the actual hypoperfused, at-risk zone of the left ventricle. However, NMR estimates of infarct size correlated less well (r = 0.75) with the pathologic measure, and significantly overestimated actual infarct size (p less than 0.005). The T1 and T2 values were consistently increased (p less than 0.0005) in both the hypoperfused and infarct zones, compared to normal myocardium. We conclude that NMR imaging can detect acute myocardial ischemia and infarction, but overestimates infarct size and corresponds better to the area of hypoperfused, ischemic myocardium. In this excised canine heart occlusion-reperfusion model, the NMR abnormality corresponded best to the area including both infarction and the surrounding ischemic region.

Prevention of subsequent exercise-induced periinfarct ischemia by emergency coronary angioplasty in acute myocardial infarction: comparison with intracoronary streptokinase.

1William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Michigan; 2Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles California; 3University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas Texas; 4College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, Harlem Hospital Affiliation, New York, New York; 5Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 6Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York, New York; 7Sutter Roseville Medical Center, Roseville, California; and 8Saint Francis Medical Center, Peoria, Illinois