Causes of PH were as follows: thromboembolic events in 4 patients (44.4%) (2 of them had chronic thromboembolic PH), left-sided heart disease in 2 patients (22.2%), pulmonary arterial hypertension in 1 patient (11.1%), high cardiac output state in 1 patient (11.1%), and transient elevation of systolic pulmonary artery pressure in 1 patient

(11.1%) who had a history of venous thromboembolism. Venous thromboembolic disease was significantly higher in patients with SLE with PH in comparison to patients with SLE without PH (7 patients [6.3%] vs 5 patients [50.0%]; P = 0.001). All patients improved clinically during their short-term follow-up.

Conclusions: Patients with SLE are at increased risk for PH. This study highlights the complexity of the differential diagnosis of PH in patients with SLE once again and emphasizes the importance of pulmonary VX-765 thromboembolism as a cause of PH. One should investigate patients with SLE with unexplained symptoms and/or signs related to PH for possible treatable

causes.”
“Objectives: To develop and validate a new risk-of-bias tool for nonrandomized studies (NRSs).

Study Design and Setting: We developed the Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Nonrandomized Studies (RoBANS). find more A validation process with 39 NRSs examined the reliability (interrater agreement), validity (the degree of correlation between the overall assessments of RoBANS and Methodological Index for Nonrandomized Studies [MINORS], obtained by plotting the overall risk of bias relative to effect size and funding source), face validity

with eight experts, and completion time for the RoBANS approach.

Results: RoBANS contains six domains: the selection of participants, confounding variables, the measurement of exposure, the blinding of the outcome assessments, incomplete outcome data, and selective outcome reporting. The interrater agreement of the RoBANS tool except the measurement of exposure and selective outcome reporting domains ranged from fair to substantial. There was a moderate correlation between the overall risks of bias determined using RoBANS and MINORS. The observed differences selleck products in effect sizes and funding sources among the assessed studies were not correlated with the overall risk of bias in these studies. The mean time required to complete RoBANS was approximately 10 min. The external experts who were interviewed evaluated RoBANS as a “”fair”" assessment tool.

Conclusions: RoBANS shows moderate reliability, promising feasibility, and validity. The further refinement of this tool and larger validation studies are required. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.”
“Heart failure (HF) patients show an inability to regulate autonomic functions, a characteristic which is associated with increased mortality. These autonomic deficits may stem from earlier demonstrated injury to central autonomic regulatory areas, providing a structural basis for the autonomic abnormalities.