Acute heart failure from noncompaction requiring emergency heart transplantation

A Rare Cause of Heart Failure Treated by Heart Transplantation: Noncompaction of the Ventricular Myocardium

Noncompaction of the ventricular myocardium is a rare cardiomyopathy due to an arrest of myocardial morphogenesis. The characteristic echocardiographic findings are prominent myocardial trabeculations and deep intertrabecular spaces communicating with the left ventricular cavity. The clinical manifestations include heart failure (HF) signs, ventricular arrhythmias, and cardioembolic events. We ...

Emergency Departments, Acute Heart Failure, and Admissions

Nearly 130 million visits to emergency departments (EDs) occur every year in the United States (1). Whether patients should have gone to the ED in the first place is frequently debated, because the ED is often viewed as an overcrowded, overused, misused, and costly resource. Yet patients rarely present to the ED for unnecessary reasons (2). Judging appropriateness of ED visits often suffers fro...

Heart failure CARDIAC TRANSPLANTATION

As a consequence of improved management in acute coronary syndromes and improved longevity of the population, the number of patients with heart failure is growing. The prevalence and incidence in industrialised countries are estimated to be around 1% and 0.15% of the population, respectively. Up to 10% of people with heart failure are at an advanced stage, amounting to 300 000 patients in the U...

Advanced Chronic Heart Failure and Heart Transplantation

Acute heart failure facts and numbers: acute heart failure populations

Acute heart failure (AHF) is a life-threatening emergency, which largely profits from early diagnosis and treatment. The prevalence of AHF is difficult to assess, estimates range between 1 and 12% in the general population. Despite recent therapeutic advances, in-hospital mortality is high with estimates varying from 4 and 18% in different registries. Due to large differences in AHF definitions...