Cardiology

In this month's "Hot Topic," Linnea Baudhuin, Ph.D., discusses Mayo Clinic Laboratories’ up-to-date gene panel tests for cardiomyopathies and arrhythmias, connective tissue and vascular fragility disorders, dyslipidemias, and congenital heart disease.

From friendly neighbor, to a hero. Darin Kittleson was in the middle of his ordinary day snow plowing his driveway when he decided to plow his neighbor’s driveway, as well. That was when he heard the cry for help. Darin rushed inside as 911 was being called, he immediately started performing CPR, which in the end saved his neighbor’s life.

Jeffrey (Jeff) Meeusen, Ph.D., gives an overview of the new nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) lipoprotein profile available through Mayo Clinic Laboratories. He discusses when this testing should be ordered, how this testing improves upon previous testing approaches, and what clinical action can be taken due to the results of this testing.

Allan Jaffe, M.D., Consultant and Chair of Mayo Clinic’s Division of Clinical Core Laboratory Services, with a joint appointment in the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, will be presenting a webinar on the implementation of a high-sensitivity troponin I assay. The webinar will be held February 13 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. eastern.

This week’s Research Roundup highlights the diagnostic accuracy of echocardiography and intraoperative surgical inspection of the unicuspid aortic valve.

After a long wait, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finally approved the Elecsys Troponin T Gen 5 STAT blood test. Recently, the Beckman hscTnI assay was also approved. These high-sensitivity troponin assays will benefit emergency departments across the country because the results will allow for earlier and faster recognition of acute myocardial infarction, which interrupts the blood supply to an area of the heart.

This week’s Research Roundup highlights the effect of inorganic nitrite versus a placebo on exercise capacity among patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

Genetic testing for cardiovascular disorders is rapidly changing. Recent advancements in technology with next-generation sequencing and the ability to sequence more for less has provided more efficient and cost-effective patient care.

High-sensitivity troponin T is a new assay recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This assay is most often used to evaluate patients with possible acute ischemic heart disease, but it also has a variety of uses in the more chronic setting.

Jeff Meeusen, Ph.D., Co-Director of Cardiovascular Laboratory Medicine, recently had his paper, “Plasma Ceramides—A Novel Predictor of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events after Coronary Angiography” accepted by the peer-reviewed journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), part of the American Heart Association’s group of journals.

This "Specialty Testing" webinar will discuss what ceramides are and how they link to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease processes.

Mayo Medical Laboratories is the first clinical laboratory to offer postmortem genetic tests for inheritable cardiovascular disorders on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue as a preferred sample type.

In this month’s “Hot Topic,” Robin Patel, M.D., will review the laboratory methods used to diagnose infectious endocarditis. Specifically, she’ll discuss the role of blood cultures, nucleic acid amplification tests, histopathology, and recently, broad-range bacterial sequencing, and how these methods can assist in the diagnosis of this disease.