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Background: Sleep is a fundamental prerequisite for physical and mental health. Poor quality of sleep is common among post‐cardiac surgery patients and leads to serious health conditions. Objective: To conduct a systematic review that investigates the effectiveness of eye masks, earplugs and deep‐breathing exercise on sleep quality among post‐cardiac surgery patients. Design: A systematic review of interventional studies was established to meet the PRISMA guidelines. Methods: PRISMA guidelines were used to assess the findings of 11 selected studies that met the inclusion criteria, published between 2007 and 2023 across four databases: CINAHL, JDNR, MEDLINE and PubMed. The search was conducted on 23 November 2023. Results: The 11 most eligible studies were analysed. All of them were interventional, encompassing a total of 787 participants. Randomised controlled trials were the most common design. Interventions included eye masks, earplugs and deep‐breathing exercises. The Richards‐Campbell Sleep Questionnaire was the most used assessment scale. Most of the reviewed studies found that the use of non‐pharmacological interventions (eye masks, earplugs and deep‐breathing exercise) significantly improves the quality of sleep. These interventions were also found to have potentially positive effects on reducing pain and delirium experienced by patients after undergoing cardiac surgery. Conclusions: Non‐pharmacological interventions (eye masks, earplugs and deep‐breathing exercise) were found to be cost‐effective interventions that could be easily applied in the clinical setting and are effective in improving the quality of sleep among patients after cardiac surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Diabetes mellitus (DM) and smoking are highly prevalent among Middle Eastern patients admitted with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) or who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Methods. This study used the analysis of the data from the first Jordanian PCI registry (JoPCR1) to determine the impact of coexistence of smoking and diabetes mellitus on the coronary artery severity and outcome following percutaneous coronary intervention in Middle Eastern patients. Results. Of 2426 patients enrolled, 1300 (53.6%) and 1055 (43.5%) were diabetics and smokers, respectively. The patients' age was 59.0 ± 10.1 and ranged between 24 and 95 years. Males comprised 79.4% of all patients. The patients were divided into four groups: nondiabetic-nonsmokers (22.2%), diabetic-nonsmokers (34.3%), nondiabetic-smokers (24.2%), and diabetic-smokers (19.2%). Compared with the other three groups, patients in the diabetic-nonsmoker group were older, more likely to be females, and having a higher prevalence of hypertension, dyslipidemia, chronic renal disease, and history of CVD and revascularization. Consequently, the diabetic-nonsmoker patients (but not the diabetic-smokers) had a higher prevalence of multivessel CAD and PCI than the other three groups, highlighting the importance of other risk factors (age, gender, metabolic syndrome, and comorbidities) and not only smoking in predisposing for CAD. Furthermore, those patients had a higher incidence of ACS as an indication for PCI than the stable coronary disease (73% vs 27%) and the highest CRUSADE bleeding risk score (63.9%) among other groups. The in-hospital events including in-stent thrombosis and emergency CABG events did not significantly differ among groups (p = 0.5 and 0.22). Heart failure and major bleeding events occurred significantly higher among diabetic-nonsmokers compared to other groups. In-hospital deaths occurred significantly more among diabetic-nonsmokers. Moreover, the one-month and one-year follow-up outcome events (the mortality rate, in-stent thrombosis, readmission for ACS, coronary revascularization, and major bleedings) occurred more frequently in the diabetic-nonsmoker group. However, the difference was statistically significant only for major bleeding incidences. Conclusions. In this analysis of a completed prospective Middle Eastern PCI registry, the majority of the diabetic-nonsmoker (and not the diabetic-smokers) patients (73%) presented with ACS. This group was the highest at risk for in-hospital PCI complications as well as the worst in outcomes after one year of follow-up. Those patients were more likely to be older, female, and have the worst cardiovascular baseline features, highlighting the importance of other risk factors (age, gender, metabolic syndrome, and comorbidities) and not only smoking in predisposing for CAD. Thus, more sufficient education about controlling CVD risk factors should be implemented in the Middle Eastern region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Decreased levels of vitamin D were associated with increased risk of multiple diseases, including cardiovascular diseases. However, there seem to be some discrepancies among the results obtained from different studies. The aim of the present study was to explore the importance of having sufficient serum levels of vitamin D in reducing the incidence and the progression of coronary artery stenosis and ischemic heart disease (IHD).Methods: Serum levels of vitamin D were measured using radioimmunoassay in 186 Jordanian patients who underwent investigative coronary catheterization. Of these patients, 133 were suffering from coronary artery stenosis. The association between vitamin D levels, coronary stenosis and many risk factors was determined using SPSS software.Results and Conclusions: Interestingly, the current results did not show an association between vitamin D abnormalities and the incidence or the reoccurrence of coronary artery stenosis. Moreover, significant differences were detected in the prevalence of vitamin D abnormalities based on the patient's gender, and there was a significant association between vitamin D abnormalities and both body mass index and dyslipidemia. However, current results did not show any significant association with other risk factors for IHD. For instance, no association was found with smoking, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, stable and unstable angina or with acute recent myocardial infarction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The safety and efficacy of drug-eluting coronary stenting have been established for various degrees of severity of coronary artery disease. The DESyne is a contemporary cobalt-chromium thin-strut stent which has been studied in low-risk patients so far., Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety, efficacy and performance of the DESyne stent in patients with an indication for coronary stent implantation at the King Abdullah University Hospital (KAUH), Jordan., Patients and Methods: Hospital records for all patients implanted with DESyne stent were retrospectively reviewed. Specific clinical events were recorded for all cases, and their incidence rates were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. A total of 715 patients (79.3% males and 58.3% with diabetes) with a mean age of 57.8±10.3 years were enrolled in this study. An acute coronary syndrome was the most frequent indication for stenting in 86.3% of the patients (unstable angina 72.0%, myocardial infarction [MI] 14.3%). A total of 849 lesions (1.2 lesions/patient) were treated with the DESyne stent., Results: After 1 year of follow-up, the death rates from cardiac or noncardiac causes were 0.6% and 1.1%, respectively. MI was observed in 0.9% of the cases, and an ischemia-driven revascularization was performed in 0.8% of them. The definite/probable stent thrombosis rate was 1.1%., Conclusion: Favorable clinical event rates including cardiac death, MI and stent thrombosis were observed for the DESyne stent in ischemic heart patients especially those with high prevalence of diabetes mellitus and acute coronary syndrome., Competing Interests: Disclosure The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.