Pregnancy in women with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator: is it safe?

AIMS: To describe obstetric/neonatal and cardiac outcomes for a cohort of women carrying implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) during pregnancy. METHODS AND RESULTS: All women in routine follow-up at our institution for ICD implantation who became pregnant between 2006 and 2013 were included in this study. All ICDs were pre-pectoral devices with bipolar endocardial leads. Obstetric/neonatal and cardiac outcomes were assessed during pregnancy and post-partum. Twenty pregnancies were conceived by 12 women carrying ICD devices, 14 of which resulted in live births and none in maternal death. Seven of these women had structural cardiomyopathies and five had channelopathies. No device-related complications were recorded. Twelve shocks (nine transthoracic and three from ICDs) were experienced during pregnancy by two women, one of whom miscarried shortly afterwards at 4 weeks gestation. One stillbirth, three miscarriages and one termination were recorded for women with long QT syndrome, repaired tetralogy of Fallot and repaired Laubry-Pezzi syndrome, respectively. Intrauterine growth restriction, low birth weight, and neonatal hypoglycaemia were recorded in four, three, and five pregnancies, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Pregnancy had no effect on ICD operation and no evidence was found to link ICD carriage with adverse pregnancy outcomes, although one miscarriage may have been induced by ICD shock therapy. A worsening of cardiac condition occurs in specific cardiac diseases and ß-blocker therapy should be continued for all women carrying ICDs in pregnancy as the benefits outweigh the risks of taking this medication.

Multimarker proteomic profiling for the prediction of cardiovascular mortality in patients with chronic heart failure.

Risk stratification of patients with systolic chronic heart failure (HF) is critical to better identify those who may benefit from invasive therapeutic strategies such as cardiac transplantation. Proteomics has been used to provide prognostic information in various diseases. Our aim was to investigate the potential value of plasma proteomic profiling for risk stratification in HF. A proteomic profiling using surface enhanced laser desorption ionization - time of flight - mass spectrometry was performed in a case/control discovery population of 198 patients with systolic HF (left ventricular ejection fraction <45%): 99 patients who died from cardiovascular cause within 3 years and 99 patients alive at 3 years. Proteomic scores predicting cardiovascular death were developed using 3 regression methods: support vector machine, sparse partial least square discriminant analysis, and lasso logistic regression. Forty two ion m/z peaks were differentially intense between cases and controls in the discovery population and were used to develop proteomic scores. In the validation population, score levels were higher in patients who subsequently died within 3 years. Similar areas under the curves (0.66 - 0.68) were observed for the 3 methods. After adjustment on confounders, proteomic scores remained significantly associated with cardiovascular mortality. Use of the proteomic scores allowed a significant improvement in discrimination of HF patients as determined by integrated discrimination improvement and net reclassification improvement indexes. In conclusion, proteomic analysis of plasma proteins may help to improve risk prediction in HF patients.