Potentialdata breach losses represent a significant part of operational risk and can be a serious concern for risk managers and insurers. In this paper, we employ the vine copulas under a Bayesian framework to co-model incidences from different data breach types. A full Bayesian approach can allow one to select both the copulas and margins and estimate their parameters in a coherent fashion. In particular, it can incorporate process, parameter, and model uncertainties, and this is very important for applications in risk management under current regulations. We also conduct a series of sensitivity tests on the Bayesian modelling results. Using two public data sets of data breach losses, we find that the overall dependency structure and tail dependence vary significantly between different types of data breaches. The optimally selected vine structure and pairwise copulas suggest more conservative value-at-risk estimates when compared to the other suboptimal copula models.

Antibody-mediated rejection is a major clinical challenge that limits graft survival. Various modalities of treatment have been reported in small studies in paediatric heart recipients. A novel approach is to use complement-inhibiting agents, such as eculizumab, which inhibits cleavage of C5 to C5a thereby limiting the formation of membrane attack complex and terminal complement-mediated injury of tissue-bound antibodies. This medical modality of treatment has theoretical advantages but the collective experience in its use in the solid organ transplant community remains small. We add to this experience by combining 14 cases from 6 paediatric heart centres in this descriptive study.

Heart transplantation offers excellent survival benefit to children with end-stage heart failure. With its success, the number of potential recipients continues to exceed the number of available donors. Developing strategies to safely increase donor utilisation is crucial to decreasing wait-list mortality. A new paediatric heart allocation policy is set to be implemented with the goal of prioritising the most urgent listed candidates. Owing to excellent outcomes of ABO-incompatible heart transplantation, the sickest infants will soon receive priority for heart offers irrespective of blood group. Allosensitisation poses unique challenges within the paediatric population; ongoing multi-centre studies are poised to refine our understanding of key risk factors and optimal treatment strategies. Biomarkers for acute cellular rejection, such as donor-specific cell-free DNA, and cardiac allograft vasculopathy, such as VEGF-A, may lead to a decreased need for invasive screening. Ultimately, well-designed and executed randomised control trials of post-transplant immunosuppression are required to improve long-term outcomes after paediatric heart transplantation.

In the United States alone, ∼14,000 children are hospitalised annually with acute heart failure. The science and art of caring for these patients continues to evolve. The International Pediatric Heart Failure Summit of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Heart Institute was held on February 4 and 5, 2015. The 2015 International Pediatric Heart Failure Summit of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Heart Institute was funded through the Andrews/Daicoff Cardiovascular Program Endowment, a philanthropic collaboration between All Children’s Hospital and the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida (USF). Sponsored by All Children’s Hospital Andrews/Daicoff Cardiovascular Program, the International Pediatric Heart Failure Summit assembled leaders in clinical and scientific disciplines related to paediatric heart failure and created a multi-disciplinary “think-tank”. The purpose of this manuscript is to summarise the lessons from the 2015 International Pediatric Heart Failure Summit of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Heart Institute, to describe the “state of the art” of the treatment of paediatric cardiac failure, and to discuss future directions for research in the domain of paediatric cardiac failure.