SynthesisBMJ open2025
Benefits of heart valve clinics for patients: a systematic review.
Synthesis in BMJ open, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo evaluate the impact of heart valve clinics (HVCs) versus standard of care (SOC) on disease detection, timing of intervention and clinical outcomes in patients with valvular heart disease (VHD).
designA systematic review was conducted following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and registered in PROSPERO (CRD42024518787). DATA SOURCES: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus and the Cochrane Library from inception to 1 May 2025. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Randomised controlled trials or cohort studies comparing patients managed in HVCs with those receiving SOC, and reporting on outcomes such as mortality, cardiac events, time to symptom reporting or symptom severity. Studies were excluded if they lacked detailed HVC protocols, single-arm designs or were published as abstracts only. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Two reviewers independently screened titles, abstracts and full texts, with discrepancies resolved by a senior adjudicator. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to assess the risk of bias. Meta-analysis was not conducted due to heterogeneity among studies.
resultsThree high-quality prospective cohort studies (N=1082) were included. Two studies reported mortality and cardiac events: one, a before-and-after controlled trial (n=382), recorded 11 deaths in the HVC group; the other reported 4 deaths in the HVC group (n=156) versus 17 deaths in the SOC group (n=156) (p<0.05). Additionally, two studies found that HVCs significantly reduced the interval between symptom onset and reporting (p<0.05), as well as the proportion of patients presenting with severe symptoms (defined as New York Heart Association (NYHA) class or Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) class ≥III).
conclusionHVCs facilitate stratified and precise management of the whole-life cycle of patients with VHD, enhancing early detection and referral, and leading to reduced mortality and major cardiac events compared with SOC.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.