Now, researchers at the University Department of Internal Medicine II at the MedUni Vienna (Clinical Department of Cardiology), as part of an international cooperation, have successfully demonstrated the advantages of an implanted defibrillator (ICD) as a means of prevention in patients with moderately restricted cardiac function, and that patients with the condition must be treated as carefully as patients with
ischaemic heart failure which has developed following a heart attack, for example.
Cardiac function assessment for
heart failure, coronary angiography for
ischaemic heart disease and Holter ECG monitoring for lethal arrhythmias can identify the type of myocardial injury and help physicians select a prophylactic therapeutic strategy against sudden cardiac death in hemodialysis patients.»
Among the 50 trials, 30 were primary prevention trials (general populations, smokers and workers exposed to asbestos, patients with oesophageal dysplasia, male physicians, patients with non-melanoma skin cancer, postmenopausal women, patients undergoing chronic haemodialysis, patients with end stage renal disease, ambulatory elderly women with vitamin D insufficiency, patients with chronic renal
failure, older people with femoral neck fractures, patients with diabetes mellitus, elderly women with a low serum 25 - hydroxyvitamin D concentration, health professionals, people with a high fasting plasma total homocysteine concentration, or kidney transplant recipients), and 20 were secondary prevention trials (patients with cardiovascular disease, coronary
heart disease, acute myocardial infarction, unstable angina, transient
ischaemic attack, stroke, angiographically proved coronary atherosclerosis, vascular disease, or aortic valve stenosis).