Pulsed electrical field (PEF) energy is a promising technique for catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias. In this article, the key aspects that need to be considered for safe and effective PEF delivery are reviewed, and their impact on clinical feasibility is discussed. The most important benefit of PEF appears to be the ability to kill cells through mechanisms that do not alter stromal proteins, sparing sensitive structures to improve safety, without sacrificing cardiomyocyte ablation efficacy. Many parameters affect PEF treatment outcomes, including pulse intensity, waveform shape, and number of pulses, as well as electrode configuration and geometry. These physical and electrical characteristics must be titrated carefully to balance target tissue effects with collateral implications (muscle contraction, temperature rise, risk of electrical arcing events). It is important to note that any combination of parameters affecting PEF needs to be tested for clinical efficacy and safety. Applying PEF clinically requires knowledge of the fundamentals of this technology to exploit its opportunities and generate viable, durable health improvements for patients.

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Heart failure disproportionately affects Black patients. Whether differences among race influence outcomes in advanced heart failure with use of a fully magnetically levitated continuous-flow left ventricular assist device remains uncertain.

Among patients with diabetes and chronic coronary disease, it is unclear if invasive management improves outcomes when added to medical therapy.

Isolated tricuspid regurgitation (TR) remains a management dilemma with poor outcomes. Echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) are valuable tools for evaluating TR, but their prognostic utility has rarely been studied together in this setting. We aimed to determine the prognostic value and thresholds for echocardiography and CMR parameters for isolated severe TR.

Assessment of left ventricular (LV) function in patients with secondary mitral regurgitation (SMR) remains challenging but is an important parameter for risk stratification. The association of LV myocardial work components (work index [GWI], constructive [GCW] and wasted [GWW] work, and work efficiency) derived from pressure-strain loops obtained with speckle tracking echocardiography, and all-cause mortality in patients with SMR was investigated.

Risk prediction models play an important role in clinical decision making. When developing risk prediction models, practitioners often impute missing values to the mean. We evaluated the impact of applying other strategies to impute missing values on the prognostic accuracy of downstream risk prediction models, that is, models fitted to the imputed data. A secondary objective was to compare the accuracy of imputation methods based on artificially induced missing values. To complete these objectives, we used data from the Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support.