Narrow Results

Myocardial infarction is the leading cause of chronic heart failure, an ominous disease entity with a wide prevalence in many countries. The morbidity and mortality of chronic heart failure remains high, despite recent pharmacologic advances and cardiac resynchronization therapy. After acute coronary occlusion, the necrotic area triggers a cascade of pathophysiologic events that may lead to structural and electrophysiological left ventricular remodeling, and eventually to progressive chronic heart failure. Therapeutic strategies targeting the repair of the infarcted myocardium aim at interrupting this vicious cycle and constitute an etiological and, as such, promising approach. However, after the initial enthusiasm accompanying early reports, subsequent preclinical and clinical studies unveiled several challenges associated with cell survival and proliferation, as well as abnormal electrophysiological responses after engraftment. In this chapter, we review the main cell sources that hold promise for clinical use, either alone or combined with growth factors and biomaterials, focusing on the acute and medium-term electrophysiological effects of cardiac regeneration approaches.

This paper summarizes the workshop content on how the integration of large biomolecular and clinical datasets can enhance the field of population health via translational informatics. Large volumes of data present diverse challenges for existing informatics technology, in terms of computational efficiency, modeling effectiveness, statistical computing, discovery algorithms, and heterogeneous data integration. While accumulating large ‘omics measurements on subjects linked with their electronic record remains a challenge, this workshop focuses on non-trivial linkages between large clinical and biomolecular datasets. For example, exposures and clinical datasets can relate through zip codes, while comorbidities and shared molecular mechanisms can relate diseases. Workshop presenters will discuss various methods developed in their respective labs/organizations to overcome the difficulties of combining together such large complex datasets and knowledge to enable the translation to clinical practice for improving health outcomes.

The alumina ceramic is well known to have good biocompatibility and high wear resistance. In a total hip replacement alumina-ceramic head is used combined with polyethylene socket. However, as to a total knee replacement alumina-ceramic component has scarcely used. We have developed new total knee prosthesis with alumina ceramic femoral component designated Bisurface knee prosthesis. Bisurface knee has been designed mainly according to the total condylar prosthesis by the cooperation of Kyoto University and Kyocera Co. Bisurface knee has a unique ball-and-socket joint in the center of the posterior portion of the ftibiofemoral articulation to improve range of motion. In our institute, 233 points were replaced with Bisurface knee fixed with bone cement since 1990 until 1994. We followed 176 joints (135 cases) from 4 to 8 years (average 5.2 years). The average of knee score improved from 47 preoperatively to 81 at follow-up time. The average of flexion angle changed from 119 to 124 degree. Five cases were operated according to infection. Three cases were revised due to instability or a breakage of the patellar peg. At six-year follow-up, the survival rate was 97%. These results showed Bisurface knee with alumina ceramic femoral component has an excellent clinical performance.