Combined Ventricular Assist Device Placement With Adjustable Gastric Band (VAD-BAND): A Promising New Technique for Morbidly Obese Patients Awaiting Potential Cardiac Transplantation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Morbid obesity remains a potential relative contraindication for cardiac transplantation. Hence, a select population of morbidly obese patients with end-stage heart failure may require a ventricular assist device (VAD) as a bridge to transplantation to afford them time to lose sufficient weight and thus decrease there mortality rate after transplantation. Unfortunately, obtaining suitable weight loss via dietary or exercise regimens is limited by the cardiac limitations of the patients. We report on a new procedure of combining ventricular assist device placement with adjustable gastric band (VAD-BAND) placement to facilitate sufficient weight loss for cardiac transplantation. METHODS: We report on our experience of 2 morbidly obese (BMI 46.6, BMI 43.7) patients with severe non-ischemic cardiomyopathy who underwent a VAD-BAND placement for treatment of morbid obesity and potential future cardiac transplantation. RESULTS: Patient 1 was a 24-year-old male with a body mass index (BMI) of 46.6 admitted in cardiogenic shock with severe non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (New York Functional Class IV, Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction 15.3%) who underwent the VAD-BAND procedure. At 11 months outpatient follow-up the patient had clinically improved with a BMI of 34.2. Patient 2 was a 36-year-old male with a body mass index of 43.7 admitted in cardiogenic shock with severe non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (New York Functional Class IV, Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction 17.1%) who underwent placement of a VAD-BAND. At 4 months post-operation, the patient was stalwart clinically with a BMI of 34.8. Both patients are now under consideration for cardiac transplantation. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, concurrent placement of a VAD-BAND is a safe and viable option for morbidly obese patients with end-stage heart disease. Further research is needed to define indications and future clinical practice. KEYWORDS: Gastric band; Ventricular assist device; Morbid obesity; Heart failure; Transplantation; Weight loss.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".