Cleveland Clinic researchers identified amyloid deposits in 10.2 percent of patients undergoing carpal tunnel release surgery, suggesting biopsies of hand tissue could be an early signal of life-threatening cardiac amyloidosis.

Women with a history of cardiotoxicity from previous cancer treatments are around 30 percent more likely to experience clinical congestive heart failure (CHF) before, during or after pregnancy, according to research published ahead of print in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Harvard Medical School scientists have created a wirelessly programmed, miniaturized pacemaker which functions for weeks to months at a time, opening the door to “previously impossible investigations of arrhythmia and heart failure in the mouse.”

Digoxin, a cardiac glycoside popularly sold under the brand name Lanoxin, poses a major threat to the heart health of atrial fibrillation (AF) and heart failure (HF) patients, according to a review published in the American Journal of Cardiology Oct. 4. Even without confounding conditions, the drug can raise an individual’s risk of all-cause mortality.

Women who suffer from peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) will likely be clinically asymptomatic seven years after they give birth, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association Oct. 3—but it’s also likely they’ll develop enduring diastolic dysfunction and reduced exercise capacity in the same window.

Heart failure (HF) patients who experience moderate functional mitral regurgitation (FMR) for at least six months after cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) are at an increased risk for death, researchers suggest in a study published this week.

Compared to heart failure patients with severe secondary mitral regurgitation who were treated with guideline-directed medical therapy alone, those randomized to a MitraClip procedure plus optimal medical therapy demonstrated relative reductions of 47 percent for heart failure hospitalizations and 38 percent for mortality at two years of follow-up.

A Journal of the American College of Cardiology study this week linked long-term alcohol consumption to adverse cardiac remodeling in patients who were initially young and healthy—something the paper’s authors said might be offset by drinking predominantly wine.