Prevalence of Post-Heart Transplant Malignancies: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The prevalence of different cancers after heart transplant (HT) is unclear due to small and conflicting prior studies. Herein, we report a systematic review and meta-analysis to highlight the prevalence and pattern of malignancies post-HT. We conducted an extensive literature search on PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane databases for prospective or retrospective studies reporting malignancies after HT. The proportions from each study were subjected to random effects model that yielded the pooled estimate with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Fifty-five studies comprising 60,684 HT recipients reported 7759 total cancers during a mean follow-up of 9.8 ± 5.9 years, with an overall incidence of 15.3% (95% CI = 12.7%-18.1%). Mean time from HT to cancer diagnosis was 5.1 ± 4 years. The most frequent cancers were gastrointestinal (7.6%), skin (5.7%), and hematologic/blood (2.5%). Meta-regression showed no association between incidence of cancer and mean age at HT (coeff: -0.008; P = 0.25), percentage of male recipients (coeff: -0.001; P = 0.81), donor age (coeff: -0.011; P = 0.44), 5-year (coeff: 0.003; P = 0.12) and 10-year (coeff: 0.02; P = 0.68) post-transplant survival. There is a substantial risk of malignancies in HT recipients, most marked for gastrointestinal, skin, and hematologic. Despite their occurrence, survival is not significantly impacted.

Efficacy of Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter-2 inhibitors in heart failure patients treated with dual angiotensin receptor blocker-neprilysin inhibitor: An updated meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Recent data suggest that the prevalence of heart failure has increased to approximately 23 million people globally. With increasing advancement in pharmacotherapeutics, Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) have garnered attention among clinicians to treat Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) in diabetic as well as non-diabetic patients. METHODS: MEDLINE, Scopus, Embase and Cochrane CENTRAL database were searched using relevant keywords and MeSH terms. Studies were considered only if they were randomized in nature and had a sample size >1000 HF patients. RESULTS: Our comprehensive search strategy yielded 864 articles, of which three RCTs met the inclusion criteria with a total population of 9696. Pooled analysis revealed an association between the use of SGLT2i and decreased frequency of primary outcome irrespective of background ARNI use (HR 0.73, 95% CI [0.58-0.93], p = 0.0106; HR 0.73, 95% CI [0.66-0.81], p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis provides substantial evidence, to safely use SGLT2i atop ARNI therapy in select HF patients to further improve outcomes.