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Background: The twelve‑lead electrocardiogram (ECG) has become an essential tool for the diagnosis, risk stratification, and management of patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS). However, several areas of residual controversies or gaps in evidence exist. Among them, P-wave abnormalities identifying atrial ischemia/infarction are largely neglected in clinical practice, and their diagnostic and prognostic implications remain elusive; the value of ECG to identify the culprit lesion has been investigated, but validated criteria indicating the presence of coronary occlusion in patients without ST-elevation are lacking; finally, which criteria among the multiple proposed, better define pathological Q-waves or success of revascularisation deserve further investigations.Methods: The Minimizing Adverse hemorrhagic events via TRansradial access site and systemic Implementation of AngioX (MATRIX) trial was designed to test the impact of bleeding avoidance strategies on ischemic and bleeding outcomes across the whole spectrum of patients with ACS receiving invasive management. The ECG-MATRIX is a pre-specified sub-study of the MATRIX programme which aims at analyzing the clinical value of ECG metrics in 4516 ACS patients (with and without ST-segment elevation in 2212 and 2304 cases, respectively) with matched pre and post-treatment ECGs.Conclusions: This study represents a unique opportunity to further investigate the role of ECGs in the diagnosis and risk stratification of ACS patients with or without ST-segment deviation, as well as to assess whether the radial approach and bivalirudin may affect post-treatment ECG metrics and patterns in a large contemporary ACS population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lower extremity arterial disease (LEAD) affects over 200 million people worldwide but, as of today, is not adequately treated and represents an important cause of morbidity, mortality and disability. Although the use of antithrombotic therapy is recommended to prevent cardiovascular adverse events, patients with LEAD often receive inadequate prescription for antithrombotic agents (antiplatelets and anticoagulants). Historically, the inadequate use of antithrombotic drugs in this clinical setting has been ascribed to the lack of high quality scientific data obtained from clinical trials enrolling patients with LEAD. However, the results of more recent clinical trials support the use of antithrombotic drugs for these patients. The aim of this article is to summarize the available evidence supporting the prescription of antithrombotic agents in patients with LEAD.

Carotid revascularization is an effective method of primary and secondary prevention of ischemic cerebral stroke in patients presenting with extracranial carotid atherosclerosis leading to significant stenosis of the internal carotid artery. Currently, the European guidelines recommend surgical revascularization in all symptomatic patients with >50% stenosis with a documented periprocedural death/stroke risk of <6%. Endovascular revascularization should be considered in symptomatic patients with anatomical and clinical features that contribute to making such patients at high surgical risk. According to the guidelines, revascularization should be considered in patients with >60% stenosis, in the presence of clinical and/or imaging features associated with an increased risk of ipsilateral stroke (in the presence of documented risk of perioperative stroke/death <3% and patient's life expectancy >5 years). In patients with low and/or average surgical risk should be considered carotid endarterectomy, while in patients who are deemed at high surgical risk carotid stenting should be considered.Nowadays, thanks to technological advances and improved operators' experience, carotid stenting can be considered a valuable therapeutic strategy.