Ebong, Imo

Importance Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women. Therapies for breast cancer are evolving rapidly, and several are associated with cardiovascular adverse effects, can exacerbate cardiovascular risk factors, or can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Observations Advances in screening and treatment have led to earlier diagnosis and improved disease-free survival. For long-term survivors of breast cancer, cardiovascular adverse effects can pose a greater threat to overall long-term health than the cancer itself. Additionally, the increasing incidence of breast cancer in younger, premenopausal women has created a distinct demographic with unique medical needs. Conclusions and Relevance Cardiology practitioners need to remain updated on rapidly evolving breast cancer therapies to care for this growing, unique patient population. The field of cardio-oncology has evolved to address the cardiovascular needs of patients and survivors.

Abstract Background Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a heterogeneous syndrome comprising multiple pathophysiological phenotypes. HFpEF trials have largely enrolled diverse populations and reported average treatment effects, consistently yielding neutral results that may obscure drug-specific benefits within distinct subgroups. To address this issue, we employ an interaction-based that incorporates treatment-by-variable interactions to uncover drug-specific responses. Methods We leveraged four HFpEF clinical trials (TOPCAT, RELAX, NEAT-HFpEF, INDIE-HFpEF) and developed a framework comprising two complementary approaches. The first employed a prognostic responder model to evaluate whether conventional responder definitions reflect treatment-specific benefit or instead capture favorable clinical trajectories common to both treatment and placebo groups. The second used an interaction-based individual treatment effect (ITE) modeling to identify baseline variables that modify therapy effect, distinguishing drug-specific response from prognostic phenotypes. Results Although the prognostic responder model demonstrated good discrimination, further analisys suggested it primarily captured a prognostic signal associated with favorable clinical trajectories common to both treatment and placebo arms. In contrast, the ITE model identified distinct, drug-specific effect modifiers across trials (cardiorenal-inflammatory for spironolactone (TOPCAT), NO-mediated anti-inflammatory for isosorbide mononitrate (NEAT-HFpEF), afterload-reducing for inorganic nitrite (INDIE-HFpEF), and anti–volume-overload for sildenafil (RELAX). Each ITE model demonstrated significance only within its own trial suggesting drug-specific signal. Conclusions The proposed method identifies mechanism-specific effect modifiers, and uncovers clinically meaningful heterogeneity in treatment response, which is not captured by conventional MCID-based approaches. Although exploratory, these findings support phenotype-guided therapy in HFpEF and argue for phenotype-informed trial design to enhance treatment-effect detection and therapy targeting. Graphical Abstract

Accurate right ventricle functional analysis prior to mechanical circulatory support continues to be valuable for preoperative stratification of patients at risk for developing right ventricular (RV) failure. While cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) remains the gold standard, CMR is limited by availability and patient-specific contraindications. Further investigation of other imaging modalities would be beneficial as it may serve as a surrogate to identifying RV systolic dysfunction. A single-center, retrospective study including 29 patients with advanced heart failure was performed. All patients underwent ventricular functional analysis with both CMR and echocardiography, and 19 patients underwent right heart catheterization. Predictability with multimodal assessment of RV function was determined using logistic regression methods. Of the 29 participants, 10 had severe RV dysfunction. Tricuspid annular plane of systolic excursion was a modest predictor of RV dysfunction with odd ratio (OR) of 0.07 (0.01–0.72) and c-statistic of 0.79. Invasive hemodynamic measurement of cardiac index by thermodilution method was also predictive of RV dysfunction but failed to reach statistical significance (OR of 0.03, <0.001–1.28) with c-statistic of 0.83. The role of invasive hemodynamic data in predicting RV function compared with CMR should be further explored among patients with advanced heart failure.