Heart failure (HF) is a prevalent condition, affecting about 26 million patients worldwide.^1,2 Guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and American College of Cardiology suggest creation of holistic management for patients with HF, which contains appropriate pharmacological and device therapy, cardiac rehabilitation (CR), remote monitoring of cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIEDs), and regular follow-up.^1-5 The ideal would be to organize ambulatory outpatient care, enabling patients with HF to maintain the improvement obtained during hospitalization. For this reason, the novel HF care model should focus on the optimal outpatient care to reduce rehospitalizations and improve the prognosis of patients with HF, leading to beneficial effects on patients’ conditions and health care system cost reduction.^1-4 Guidelines recommend CR that uses patient education, health behavior modification, and exercise training (an 1A recommendation) to improve secondary prevention outcomes in patients with HF.^1-4,6 Unfortunately, CR programs are considerably underused, with only about 20% of eligible patients participating in one.^7,8 Factors hindering CR include a lack of resources (eg, a lack of caregivers, long waiting lists) as well as logistical and psychological problems (eg, transportation issues, the need to be assisted by relatives or partners, a lack of motivation, nonacceptance of the proposed CR models).^9,10 The development of new technologies provides the opportunity to include telemedicine in the organization of outpatient HF care.^10,11 However, the results of studies focused on remote management of patients with HF have been inconsistent.^12-18 A new promising solution that overcomes the barriers to CR and at the same time provides guideline-consistent monitoring of physical training in patients at moderate and high risk is telerehabilitation.^6,10,11,19 Yet, to date, only a handful of single-center studies have demonstrated that telerehabilitation is safe, effective, and noninferior to a hospital-based or outpatient-based rehabilitation of patients with HF.^19-24 Therefore, the consensus document of the European Society of Cardiology Heart Failure Association Working Group⁴ and scientific statement from the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Cardiology⁶ indicate that home-based CR using telemedicine is a promising direction, but the results should be confirmed by multicenter studies.

Several therapies used in cancer treatment are potentially cardiotoxic and may cause left ventricular (LV) dysfunction and heart failure. For decades, echocardiography has been the main modality for cardiac assessment in cancer patients, and the parameter examined in the context of cardiotoxicity was the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). The assessment of the global longitudinal strain (GLS) using speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) is an emerging method for detecting and quantifying subtle disturbances in the global long-axis LV systolic function. In the latest ESC guidelines on cardio-oncology, GLS is an important element in diagnosing the cardiotoxicity of oncological therapy. A relative decrease in GLS of >15% during cancer treatment is the recommended cut-off point for suspecting subclinical cardiac dysfunction. An early diagnosis of asymptomatic cardiotoxicity allows the initiation of a cardioprotective treatment and reduces the risk of interruptions or changes in the oncological treatment in the event of LVEF deterioration, which may affect survival.

Current knowledge of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) epidemiology is based mainly on data from Western populations, and therefore we aimed to characterize a large group of Caucasian PAH adults of Central-Eastern European origin. We analyzed data of incident and prevalent PAH adults enrolled in a prospective national registry involving all Polish PAH centers. The estimated prevalence and annual incidence of PAH were 30.8/mln adults and 5.2/mln adults, respectively and they were the highest in females ≥65 years old. The most frequent type of PAH was idiopathic (n = 444; 46%) followed by PAH associated with congenital heart diseases (CHD-PAH, n = 356; 36.7%), and PAH associated with connective tissue disease (CTD-PAH, n = 132; 13.6%). At enrollment, most incident cases (71.9%) were at intermediate mortality risk and the prevalent cases had most of their risk factors in the intermediate or high risk range. The use of triple combination therapy was rare (4.7%). A high prevalence of PAH among older population confirms the changing demographics of PAH found in the Western countries. In contrast, we found: a female predominance across all age groups, a high proportion of patients with CHD-PAH as compared to patients with CTD-PAH and a low use of triple combination therapy.

Lung cancer is a major cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, both in men and women. The vast majority of patients are diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC, 80–85% of lung cancer cases). Therapeutics named immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer treatment in the last decade. They are monoclonal antibodies, and those directed against PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) or PD-L1 (programmed cell death-ligand 1) have been used in the treatment of lung cancer and significantly improved the prognosis of NSCLC patients. However, during treatment with ICIs, immune-related adverse events (irAEs) can occur in any organ and any tissue. At the same time, although cardiac irAEs are relatively rare compared to irAEs in other organs, they have a high mortality rate. The two most common clinical manifestations of immunotherapy-related cardiotoxicity are myocarditis and pericarditis. Various types of arrhythmias have been reported in patients treated with ICIs, including the occurrence of life-threatening complete atrioventricular block or ventricular tachyarrhythmias. Here, we aim to summarize the incidence, clinical manifestations, underlying mechanisms, diagnosis, and treatment strategies for ICI-associated cardiotoxicity as these issues become very important in view of the increasing use of ICI in the treatment of lung cancer.