Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) has emerged as an important cause of acute coronary syndrome, myocardial infarction, and sudden death, particularly among young women and individuals with few conventional atherosclerotic risk factors. Patient-initiated research has spurred increased awareness of SCAD, and improved diagnostic capabilities and findings from large case series have led to changes in approaches to initial and long-term management and increasing evidence that SCAD not only is more common than previously believed but also must be evaluated and treated differently from atherosclerotic myocardial infarction. High rates of recurrent SCAD; its association with female sex, pregnancy, and physical and emotional stress triggers; and concurrent systemic arteriopathies, particularly fibromuscular dysplasia, highlight the differences in clinical characteristics of SCAD compared with atherosclerotic disease. Recent insights into the causes of, clinical course of, treatment options for, outcomes of, and associated conditions of SCAD and the many persistent knowledge gaps are presented.
Myocardial infarction in the absence of obstructive coronary artery disease is found in ≈5% to 6% of all patients with acute infarction who are referred for coronary angiography. There are a variety of causes that can result in this clinical condition. As such, it is important that patients are appropriately diagnosed and an evaluation to uncover the correct cause is performed so that, when possible, specific therapies to treat the underlying cause can be prescribed. This statement provides a formal and updated definition for the broadly labelled term MINOCA (incorporating the definition of acute myocardial infarction from the newly released “Fourth Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction”) and provides a clinically useful framework and algorithms for the diagnostic evaluation and management of patients with myocardial infarction in the absence of obstructive coronary artery disease.
1 February 2018 in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
To describe: (1) nurses’ physical and mental health; (2) the relationship between health and medical errors; and (3) the association between nurses’ perceptions of wellness support and their health. A cross sectional descriptive survey was conducted with 1,790 nurses across the U.S. Over half of the nurses reported sub-optimal physical and mental health. Approximately half of the nurses reported having medical errors in the past 5 years. Compared to nurses with better health, those with worse health were associated with 26% to 71% higher likelihood of having medical errors. There also was a significant relationship between greater perceived worksite wellness and better health. Wellness must be a high priority for healthcare systems to optimize health in clinicians to enhance high quality care and decrease the odds of costly preventable medical errors.