87 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
In this study we seek to test the hypothesis that safety and clinical outcomes after cardiac transplantation utilizing HCV NAT+ donor organs as currently performed are acceptable.
The purpose of this project is to improve mobility in the perioperative period using activity trackers to augment current practice. Delirium and poor functional status following ICU stays are intractable problems for which clear solutions do not exist. Digital health approaches have not been applied to these problems in the ICU setting and may represent a viable and unexplored intervention. The program will involve the utilization of an activity tracker in ambulating patients. There will be two arms to the program. The first will involve the longitudinal study of ambulating lung transplant patients. Patients will be given an activity tracker at time of transplant which will continue throughout their care into their first month at home. The data will be collected to identify correlation between activity and clinical outcomes.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate if Non-Ischemic Heart Preservation (NIHP) of extended criteria donor hearts using the XVIVO Heart Preservation System (XHPS) is a safe and effective way to preserve and transport hearts for transplantation.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the device performance and monitor the safety and effectiveness of the Berlin Heart EXCOR Active Driving System while being used with the approved EXCOR Pediatric Ventricular Assist Device. EXCOR Active Driving System is intended for use with the approved EXCOR Pediatric VAD. The EXCOR Pediatric VAD is intended to provide mechanical circulatory support as a bridge to cardiac transplantation for pediatric patients. Pediatric candidates with severe isolated left ventricular or biventricular dysfunction who are candidates for cardiac transplant and require circulatory support may be treated using the EXCOR Pediatric. EXCOR Active is intended for use in a clinical setting. EXCOR Active can be used in any kind of hospital unit (e.g. OR, ICU, intermediate care unit or general care unit). The driving unit may be moved between clinical units using the caddy or baby buggy; however, a patient must always be accompanied by a person trained in the use of the manual pump and emergency procedures during transport in the event of an emergency. The driving unit can be transported during operation.
1. Cell-free DNA does not vary significantly as a function of the activity of immunologically quiescent cardiac transplant recipients, despite the metabolic demands of the transplanted organ. (The implication of the null result would be that no restrictions to patient activity, nor modification of cardiac rehabilitation prescription, would be necessary to maintain proper test characteristics of AlloSure testing). 2. In immunologically active cardiac transplant allografts, exercise prior to assay of donor-derived cell-free DNA can be used to increase the sensitivity of the AlloSure test. (The implication of this would be that the optimal time-frame for drawing an Allosure may actually be post-exercise, and that window will be characterized).
In individuals needing a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), right heart failure (RHF) is a serious complication post-surgery, associated with worsened outcomes including mortality. However, predictors of decompensation after LVAD are not well established. Liver dysfunction pre-LVAD has been shown to be associated with poor outcomes post-LVAD, but the interplay between liver abnormalities and RHF post-LVAD is not well characterized. Liver stiffness (LS) is a measure associated with certain types of liver abnormalities (e.g., liver fibrosis; cirrhosis). Thus, we hypothesize that elevated LS measured by SWE is associated with increased morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing LVAD implantation and yields increased need for advanced postoperative HF therapies including the use of right ventricular assist devices (RVAD) for the management of RHF.
Heart transplantation is a life saving therapy for people with end stage heart failure. Acute rejection, a process where the immune system recognizes the transplanted heart as foreign and mounts a response against it, remains a clinical problem despite improvements in immunosuppressive drugs. Acute rejection occurs in 20-30% of patients within the first 3 months post-transplant, and is currently detected by highly invasive heart tissue biopsies that happen 12-15 times in the first year post-transplant. Replacing the biopsy with a simple blood test is of utmost value to patients and will reduce healthcare costs. The goal of our project is to develop a new blood test to monitor heart transplant rejection. Advances in biotechnology have enabled simultaneous measurement of many molecules (e.g., proteins, nucleic acids) in blood, driving the development of new diagnostics. Our team is a leader in using computational tools to combine information from numerous biological molecules and clinical data to generate "biomarker panels" that are more powerful than existing diagnostic tests. Our sophisticated analytic methods has recently derived HEARTBiT, a promising test of acute rejection comprising 9 RNA biomarkers, from the measurement of 30,000 blood molecules in 150 Canadian heart transplant patients. Our objective is to study a custom-built HEARTBiT test in a setting and on a technology that enable clinical adoption. We will evaluate the new test on 400 new patients from 5 North American transplant centres. We will also track patients' HEARTBiT scores over time to help predict future rejection, and explore use of proteins and micoRNAs to improve HEARTBiT. Our work will provide the basis for a future clinical trial. The significance of this work rests in that it will provide a tool to identify acute cardiac rejection in a fast, accurate, cost-effective and minimally invasive manner, allowing for facile long-term monitoring and therapy tailoring for heart transplant patients.
Heart bypass surgery, also known as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, creates a detour around the blocked part of a heart artery to restore blood supply to the heart muscle. The saphenous vein, located along the inside of the leg, is commonly used to create the bypass in a CABG surgery. An abnormal increase in the blood clotting protein thrombin may cause the saphenous vein graft to close up and eventually fail. This study will evaluate the relationship between thrombin levels and saphenous vein graft failures in people undergoing a CABG procedure.
The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of graft pretreatment with CGT003 (E2F Duplex Decoy), as compared to placebo, on the incidence of patients experiencing vein graft failure after coronary artery bypass surgery.
This will be a prospective, randomized study performed at a single tertiary referral academic medical center (University of California San Francisco, CA), evaluating the survival benefits of levothyroxine compared with no levothyroxine for patients who have undergone heart transplant. It will be double-blinded and placebo-control; participants will be randomized to receive levothyroxine or receive no levothyroxine.
This is an open label Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) study in which patients will be randomized at the site level to Prospera surveillance or EMB surveillance in a 2:1 ratio (Prospera to EMB) at each site. Subjects will be enrolled into the study while under evaluation for heart transplantation or on the transplant waiting list prior to heart transplantation. All subjects will follow the center's standard of care surveillance schedule from transplant through 4 weeks post-transplantation. EMB during this phase is expected to occur roughly weekly or bi-weekly. Study group assignment will take place at randomization. Subjects will be randomized 30 days (± 10 days) post-transplant to Prospera surveillance versus EMB surveillance in a 2:1 ratio. Rejection surveillance (Prospera Group and EMB Group) will be performed at times corresponding to the institutional standard of care schedule for rejection surveillance.
Following orthoptopic heart transplantation (OHT), children undergo surveillance cardiac catheterizations to assess for signs of rejection including muscle biopsy as well as pressure measurements to guide post transplant treatment regiments. These procedures are done under general anesthesia which promotes lung tissue collapse (atelectasis). What is not known is the effect of atelectasis on intracardiac pressures which are a critical area of monitoring post-transplant patients for rejection.
This is a prospective, pilot trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of The Paragonix SherpaPak™ Cardiac Transport System ("SherpaPak CTS") in transportation of cardiac allografts recovered from donors after circulatory death with thoracoabdominal normothermic regional perfusion (TA-NRP). SherpaPak™ CTS is an ultraportable hypothermic preservation and transport system that has been approved by United States Food \& Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical use in heart transplantation.
This is a prospective, observational, pilot trial to evaluate the feasibility of heart transplantation using normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) donation after donor circulatory death (DCD). Normothermic regional perfusion utilizes Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) or cardiopulmonary bypass to reperfuse the heart and other organs in situ after isolation and ligation of the cerebral vessels. In situ resuscitation of the heart has the added advantage of allowing full hemodynamic and echocardiographic assessment of the donor heart prior to final acceptance for transplantation without the imminent danger of ongoing warm ischemia.
Immunosuppressive therapy is required to prevent organ rejection, however, dosing of immunosuppressive agents is complicated by patient-specific differences impacting the body's absorption and elimination of these agents. The goal of this research proposal is to clinically validate an innovative precision medicine strategy for dosing the immunosuppressant tacrolimus in pediatric heart transplant, which will in turn lead to improvements in long-term transplant survival outcomes. The strategy and techniques used in this project can be extended to improve drug therapy across multiple pediatric diseases requiring chronic therapy.
Patients with marginal physiologic reserve, severe frailty, and/or malnutrition may be regarded as unsuitable candidates for advanced cardiac replacement therapies. However, little data exist on precisely which measures are predictive of subsequent adverse events. Assessment of nutritional status and frailty is still largely predicated on crude and obsolete parameters, such as baseline serum albumin level or body mass index (BMI). In this prospective cohort study the investigators will evaluate the use of bio-electrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS) as a measure of body composition and assess the associations with surgical outcomes.
The investigators will evaluate for early evidence of cardiac allograft dysfunction by cardiac MRI and single cell sequencing to determine underlying molecular and macroscopic causes.
Plasma donor-derived cell-free DNA (dd-cfDNA) is measured as a % of the total plasma cfDNA in association with the measurement of AlloMap, a non-invasive gene expression test to aid in heart transplant management.
This is a single center observational study. Duration of the study is 1 year. Participants will be followed in 2 groups. Group 1 will include all patients who have undergone a heart transplant, through the first year post transplant. Group 2 will include heart transplant recipients from 1 year to 2 years post transplant. Groups will be enrolled simultaneously. It is anticipated each group will have 25 participants.
The objective of this registry is to observe short and long term clinical outcomes in heart transplant recipients who receive regular AlloMap testing as part of allograft rejection surveillance.
The purpose of this study is to test whether Daratumumab-SC, a drug that eliminates antibody-producing plasma cells, can effectively lower the level of preformed antibodies in patients awaiting heart transplantation. These preformed antibodies limit the number of donor hearts that are compatible for the patients. If Daratumumab-SC can effectively remove preformed, donor-specific antibodies, then highly allosensitized patients will have more compatible hearts available to them, potentially decreasing transplant waitlist time and reducing mortality.
The TEAMMATE Trial will enroll 210 pediatric heart transplant patients from 25 centers at 6 months post-transplant and follow each patient for 2.5 years. Half of the participants will receive everolimus and low-dose tacrolimus and the other half will receive tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. The trial will determine which treatment is better at reducing the cumulative risk of coronary artery vasculopathy, chronic kidney disease and biopsy proven-acute cellular rejection without an increase in graft loss due to all causes (e.g. infection, PTLD, antibody mediated rejection).
The primary goal of this Multicenter Study is to develop and to evaluate a method for measuring donor-specific cell free DNA in blood samples from transplant recipients as markers of rejection. Blood samples obtained periodically from heart transplant recipients are assessed for cell free DNA relative to clinical data in order to determine whether changes in the level of cell free DNA indicate rejection. This research study proposes testing a blood sample obtained from the heart transplant recipient. The research seeks to establish whether this blood test will show when the patient is beginning to or already rejecting the transplanted heart. BACKGROUND Identifying if a transplant patient is beginning to or already rejecting the heart is necessary, so that appropriate treatment can be started to halt the rejection. Heart catheterization with biopsy is the usual method used for assessing whether a patient may be rejecting the heart. There are also a number of other methods that transplant physicians will use to look for signs of rejection including other blood tests, echocardiograms, obtaining pressure readings during heart catheterization, and micro-array testing of blood obtained during biopsy. These technologies are limited in ability to consistently and accurately identify the presence of rejection. The usual method of checking for rejection involves obtaining a sample of the heart tissue (heart biopsy); biopsy can only be accomplished through heart catheterization which is an invasive procedure that has risks associated with disturbing the heart such as puncturing the heart or causing the heart rate to change or damaging tissue in the heart. Overtime, repeating this invasive procedure can diminish the ease of the procedure because the veins can become scarred and more difficult to access. For these reasons, researchers believe that it would be good to have a blood test that gives information about the possibility of rejection so that it may not be necessary to do as many heart biopsies. Also, a blood test may be able to provide information about the heart or about rejection that is currently not available at all.
This phase II, multi-center, open-label study will evaluate the safety and efficacy of utilizing HCV-positive donors for heart transplant in HCV-negative recipients treated with sofosbuvir 400 mg / velpatasvir 100 mg (Epclusa®).
The purpose of this study is to compare health-related quality of life (HRQOL) outcomes in older (60-80 years) advanced heart failure (HF) patients who undergo heart transplantation (HT) or mechanical circulatory support (MCS) as a permanent implant (i.e., destination therapy \[DT\]) and their caregivers. Our study will contribute to better patient-centered care of older advanced HF patients and their caregivers, by informing decision making and guiding strategies to enhance post-operative HRQOL.
1. to conduct a clinical investigation to determine if inhaled epoprostenol (Veletri®, iEPO) and inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) will have similar impact on outcomes in adult patients undergoing durable LVAD placement, heart transplantation, or lung transplantation 2. to conduct a cost-capture analysis on the expense each drug incurs per patient.
The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) is an NIH Roadmap initiative to develop a computerized system measuring patient-reported outcomes in respondents with a wide range of chronic diseases and demographic characteristics. In the first four years of its existence, the PROMIS network developed item banks for measuring patient-reported outcomes in the areas of pain, fatigue, emotional distress, physical function, and social functioning. During the item banking process, the PROMIS network conducted focus groups, individual cognitive interviews, and lexile (reading level) analyses to refine the meaning, clarity, and literacy demands of all items. The item banks were administered to over 20,000 respondents and calibrated using models based on item response theory (IRT). Using these IRT calibrations, computerized adaptive test (CAT) algorithms were developed and implemented. The network has designed a series of studies using clinical populations to evaluate the item attributes, examine their utility as CATs, and validate the item banks. More information on the PROMIS network can be found at www.nihpromis.org. The purpose of this research study is to learn about the experience and impact of having congestive heart failure (CHF). In particular, we hope to develop better questionnaires that can measure heart failure patients' quality-of-life.
The purposes of this study in United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Status 1B (or country equivalent) cardiac transplant candidates are to assess the safety and efficacy of Natrecor (nesiritide). The study will evaluate the drug's ability to prevent clinical worsening when administered as a 28-day continuous intravenous infusion in patients receiving standard care and continuous intravenous infusion of dobutamine or milrinone.
One of the risks associated with heart transplantation is failure of the graft. A graft is where the new heart is attached to the original vessels in the body. Approximately 10% of children suffer graft failure which, leads to heart failure and possible death. The problem is that we do not know some of the causes of graft failure thus, it is difficult to diagnose early and treat. Due to graft failure, lots of children are placed back on the transplant list and receive another new heart. In this study, we plan to perform a retrospective chart review looking to see if we can correlate graft failure with a problem with the vessels called coronary allograft vasculopathy or rejection. In order to do this, we will collect data from patient's charts that have been diagnosed with graft failure and compare their clinical presentation/data to pathology reports of the explanted hearts from these children. Explanted hearts are the old transplanted hearts that are removed in order to put a new heart into the body. Explanted hearts at our institution are always sent to pathology for analysis thus it will be quite easy to perform this review.
OCTOCAB is a prospective, randomized (1:1), single-center trial. The purpose of this study is to determine whether intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT) guided saphenous vein grafting in coronary artery bypass surgery will reduce the rate of early vein graft failure (VGF).