Guía sobre el manejo de desfibriladores automáticos implantables al final de la vida

El presente artículo es un documento conjunto de la Sociedad Española de Geriatría y Gerontología, la Sociedad Española de Cuidados Paliativos y la Sección de Cardiología Geriátrica de la Sociedad Española de Cardiología. Su objetivo es paliar la laguna que existe en España en lo que respecta al manejo de los desfibriladores automáticos implantables (DAI) en las fases finales de la vida. Cada vez es más frecuente encontrarse enfermos portadores de DAI en fase terminal de una enfermedad avanzada, como insuficiencia cardíaca refractaria, enfermedades oncológicas, otras insuficiencias orgánicas o enfermedades neurodegenerativas con mal pronóstico a corto plazo. La enorme mayoría de estos pacientes tiene más de 65 años, por ello el documento se enfoca de forma particular a los ancianos que se encuentran en esta situación, aunque el proceso de toma de decisiones es similar en portadores de DAI más jóvenes que están en la fase final de su vida.

Guidelines on the management of implantable cardioverter defibrillators at the end of life

El presente artículo es un documento conjunto de la Sociedad Española de Geriatría y Gerontología, la Sociedad Española de Cuidados Paliativos y la Sección de Cardiología Geriátrica de la Sociedad Española de Cardiología. Su objetivo es paliar la laguna que existe en España en lo que respecta al manejo de los desfibriladores automáticos implantables (DAI) en las fases finales de la vida. Cada vez es más frecuente encontrarse enfermos portadores de DAI en fase terminal de una enfermedad avanzada, como insuficiencia cardíaca refractaria, enfermedades oncológicas, otras insuficiencias orgánicas o enfermedades neurodegenerativas con mal pronóstico a corto plazo. La enorme mayoría de estos pacientes tiene más de 65 años, por ello el documento se enfoca de forma particular a los ancianos que se encuentran en esta situación, aunque el proceso de toma de decisiones es similar en portadores de DAI más jóvenes que están en la fase final de su vida.

Optimal control of non-linear systems through hybrid cell-mapping/artificial-neural-networks techniques

In this paper, a real-time optimal control technique for non-linear plants is proposed. The control system makes use of the cell-mapping (CM) techniques, widely used for the global analysis of highly non-linear systems. The CM framework is employed for designing approximate optimal controllers via a control variable discretization. Furthermore, CM-based designs can be improved by the use of supervised feedforward artificial neural networks (ANNs), which have proved to be universal and efficient tools for function approximation, providing also very fast responses. The quantitative nature of the approximate CM solutions fits very well with ANNs characteristics. Here, we propose several control architectures which combine, in a different manner, supervised neural networks and CM control algorithms. On the one hand, different CM control laws computed for various target objectives can be employed for training a neural network, explicitly including the target information in the input vectors. This way, tracking problems, in addition to regulation ones, can be addressed in a fast and unified manner, obtaining smooth, averaged and global feedback control laws. On the other hand, adjoining CM and ANNs are also combined into a hybrid architecture to address problems where accuracy and real-time response are critical. Finally, some optimal control problems are solved with the proposed CM, neural and hybrid techniques, illustrating their good performance.

Comparison of 1-year outcome in patients with severe aorta stenosis treated conservatively or by aortic valve replacement or by percutaneous transcatheter aortic valve implantation (data from a multicenter Spanish registry)

The factors that influence decision making in severe aortic stenosis (AS) are unknown. Our aim was to assess, in patients with severe AS, the determinants of management and prognosis in a multicenter registry that enrolled all consecutive adults with severe AS during a 1-month period. One-year follow-up was obtained in all patients and included vital status and aortic valve intervention (aortic valve replacement [AVR] and transcatheter aortic valve implantation [TAVI]). A total of 726 patients were included, mean age was 77.3 ± 10.6 years, and 377 were women (51.8%). The most common management was conservative therapy in 468 (64.5%) followed by AVR in 199 (27.4%) and TAVI in 59 (8.1%). The strongest association with aortic valve intervention was patient management in a tertiary hospital with cardiac surgery (odds ratio 2.7, 95% confidence interval 1.8 to 4.1, p <0.001). The 2 main reasons to choose conservative management were the absence of significant symptoms (136% to 29.1%) and the presence of co-morbidity (128% to 27.4%). During 1-year follow-up, 132 patients died (18.2%). The main causes of death were heart failure (60% to 45.5%) and noncardiac diseases (46% to 34.9%). One-year survival for patients treated conservatively, with TAVI, and with AVR was 76.3%, 94.9%, and 92.5%, respectively, p <0.001. One-year survival of patients treated conservatively in the absence of significant symptoms was 97.1%. In conclusion, most patients with severe AS are treated conservatively. The outcome in asymptomatic patients managed conservatively was acceptable. Management in tertiary hospitals is associated with valve intervention. One-year survival was similar with both interventional strategies.