September 7th, 2012
News Briefs: Cholesterol Trends, AHA Late-Breakers, FDA Updates On Rivaroxaban And Heartware HVAD
Larry Husten, PHD
Cholesterol Trends The Centers for Disease Control issued a new report with the latest details about the prevalence of cholesterol screening and high blood cholesterol in U.S. adults. Here is their summary of the key findings: …cholesterol screening increased from 72.7% in 2005 to 76.0% in 2009, whereas the percentage of those screened who reported […]
September 6th, 2012
Resuscitating Resuscitation
Brahmajee Kartik Nallamothu, MD, MPH and Zachary Goldberger, MD, MS
Lancet authors Brahmajee Nallamothu and Zarchary Goldberger join CardioExchange to answer questions about their provocative study indicating a correlation between prolonged resuscitation efforts and survival.
September 6th, 2012
Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: September 6th
Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP
This week’s topics includes studies on aspirin plus clopidogrel in patients with recent lacunar stroke and the risk of coronary events in patients with either CKD or diabetes.
September 6th, 2012
Unrecognized MI: More Prevalent and Dangerous Than Previously Suspected
Larry Husten, PHD
Unrecognized myocardial infarction is more prevalent, and is associated with a worse prognosis, than may be generally understood.
September 5th, 2012
Databases and Decisions
Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM
What’s an “excellent” mortality rate for elective ascending aorta/arch replacement, and how would we know?
September 4th, 2012
Danish Survey Finds Clopidogrel Less Effective in Diabetics
Larry Husten, PHD
A large nationwide survey of MI survivors in Denmark provides new information about the efficacy of antiplatelet therapy with clopdiogrel in patients with diabetes. In a paper published in JAMA, Charlotte Andersson reports on 58,851 MI patients, 12% of whom had diabetes and 60% of whom received clopidogrel. As expected, diabetics had a worse outcome than nondiabetics: the […]
September 4th, 2012
CDC: Nearly 36 Million Americans Have Uncontrolled Hypertension
Larry Husten, PHD
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) show: 30.4% of U.S. adults (an estimated 66.9 million people) have hypertension. Of those with hypertension, 53.5% have uncontrolled hypertension (about 35.8 million people). 39.4% with uncontrolled hypertension (about 14.1 million) are unaware that they have hypertension. 89.4% […]
September 4th, 2012
You Got the Criminal. But What About the Bystander?
Mark Dayer, MD PhD FRCP and James Fang, MD
A drug-eluting stent is successfully implanted after an acute inferior MI in a fit 70-year-old man. What do you do for the bystander disease detected at the LAD/D1 junction?
September 4th, 2012
ESC Trials: The Best And The Worst
Larry Husten, PHD
Larry Husten is back from ESC and discussing two trials that exemplify how medicine is supposed to work, and one that exemplifies what can go wrong, especially when commercial interests are at stake.
September 4th, 2012
FDA Warns Against Using Revatio in Kids with Pulmonary Hypertension
Revatio (sildenafil) should not be prescribed to children and adolescents with pulmonary arterial hypertension, according to an FDA MedWatch alert. The warning is based on the results of a trial published in Circulation that showed increased mortality at medium and high doses of Revatio, compared with low-dose treatment, among patients aged 1 to 17 years. […]