Temporal Relationship of Glycemia With Cardiac Arrhythmias in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes and CKD

Making sense of glucose sensors in end-stage kidney disease: A review

Diabetes mellitus remains the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease worldwide. Inadequate glucose monitoring has been identified as one of the gaps in care for hemodialysis patients with diabetes, and lack of reliable methods to assess glycemia has contributed to uncertainty regarding the benefit of glycemic control in these individuals. Hemoglobin A1c, the standard metric to evaluate glycemic control, is inaccurate in patients with kidney failure, and does not capture the full range of glucose values for patients with diabetes. Recent advances in continuous glucose monitoring have established this technology as the new gold standard for glucose management in diabetes. Glucose fluctuations are uniquely challenging in patients dependent on intermittent hemodialysis, and lead to clinically significant glycemic variability. This review evaluates continuous glucose monitoring technology, its validity in the setting of kidney failure, and interpretation of glucose monitoring results for the nephrologist. Continuous glucose monitoring targets for patients on dialysis have yet to be established. While continuous glucose monitoring provides a more complete picture of the glycemic profile than hemoglobin A1c and can mitigate high-risk hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia in the context of the hemodialysis procedure itself, whether the technology can improve clinical outcomes merits further investigation.

Incidence of Arrhythmias and Their Prognostic Value in Patients With Multiple Myeloma

Background: Arrhythmias are common cardiovascular complications in multiple myeloma (MM) patients and are related to a poor prognosis.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the burden of arrhythmias and their prognostic value in patients with MM.

Methods: This was a retrospective study of patients with MM between January 2015 and April 2020 at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University. The incidence of arrhythmia and associated risk factors were evaluated. The relationship between the type of arrhythmia and survival was analyzed.

Results: A total of 319 patients with MM were identified, and 48.0% (153/319) had arrhythmias. The most common type of arrhythmia was sinus tachycardia (ST) (15.0%, 48/319), followed by sinus bradycardia (SB) (14.4%, 46/319), premature atrial contractions (PACs) (6.3%, 20/319), conduction disorders (CDs) (6.0%, 19/319), atrial fibrillation (AF) (6.0%, 19/319), premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) (4.4%, 14/319) and paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) (0.6%, 2/319). The patients with arrhythmias had higher levels of log NT-proBNP and creatinine, greater bortezomib use, and a higher incidence of diabetes than those without arrhythmias (P < 0.05). The all-cause mortality rates of patients without arrhythmias and those with AF, ST, PACs, CDs, SB, and PVCs were 50.6% (84/166), 73.7% (14/19), 60.4% (29/48), 60.0% (12/20), 52.6% (10/19), 34.8% (16/46), and 28.6% (4/14), respectively. In a subgroup analysis of patients experiencing different types of arrhythmias, patients with SB had lower all-cause mortality than patients with AF (P < 0.01). Univariate and multivariate Cox analyses showed that there was a positive statistically significant association between SB and survival (HR: 0.592 [0.352–0.998], P = 0.049) in a subgroup analysis of different arrhythmias.

Conclusions: Patients with MM had a heavy arrhythmia burden, and in this study, approximately half of MM patients had arrhythmias. MM patients with SB were associated with lower all-cause mortality than those with AF. SB might be an independent positive factor for prognosis.