April 22nd, 2013
Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: April 22nd
Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP
This week’s topics include the prevalence of a healthy lifestyle among those with CV disease in high-, middle-, and low-income countries, nonemergency PCI at hospitals with or without on-site cardiac surgery, and coronary artery calcium score prediction of all-cause mortality and CV events in those with type-2 diabetes.
April 22nd, 2013
Actelion Executive to Head American College of Cardiology
Larry Husten, PHD
Shalom “Shal” Jacobovitz will be the new chief executive officer of the American College of Cardiology, the ACC announced today. Jacobovitz is currently the president of the U.S. division of Actelion Pharmaceuticals, best known for its pulmonary hypertension drugs. Jacobovitz worked at Hoffmann La Roche, Abbott Canada, Nordic Labs, and Marion Merrill Dow before joining Actelion. He joins the […]
April 22nd, 2013
The FDA, Surrogate Endpoints, and Blood Pressure Drugs
Larry Husten, PHD
In recent years the FDA has come under increasing fire for approving drugs on the basis of surrogate endpoints without any evidence of greater clinical benefit. The most famous example of this is the diabetes drug rosiglitazone. Despite strong evidence demonstrating that it was effective at lower blood glucose levels — the surrogate endpoint — serious questions […]
April 22nd, 2013
The Science of Management and The Art of Medicine
Kenneth John McConnell, PhD and John Ryan, MD
K. John McConnell discusses his research group’s study of standard management practices as they relate to quality of care in hospital cardiac units.
April 18th, 2013
Educating House Staff on Appropriate Use of Echoes
Rory B Weiner, MD, Rajan Sacha Bhatia, MD/MBA and John Ryan, MD
A relatively simple educational intervention reduces the ordering of inappropriate echoes
April 18th, 2013
Advice for Physicians: How to Behave Online
Larry Husten, PHD
Although the internet represents “a new frontier in medicine” for physicians and patients, it also presents numerous and novel challenges to professionalism, according to a position paper from the American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The paper offers physicians a new conceptual “framework for analyzing […]
April 17th, 2013
Cardio Oncology: Counseling Women on The Cardiovascular Risks of Radiation Therapy
John Ryan, MD
What to tell women with breast cancer about the cardiovascular risks of radiation therapy for breast cancer.
April 16th, 2013
Blood Sample Mismatch Leads ‘Anguished’ Authors to Retract Three Lipitor Papers
Larry Husten, PHD
Three substudies of the influential TNT (Treating to New Targets) trial have been retracted after the sponsor of the trial, Pfizer, discovered that blood samples from the study had been matched to the wrong participants. The main results of TNT, published in 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine, had a major impact on clinical practice and statin prescription patterns. […]
April 16th, 2013
Small Study Links Left Anterior Fascicular Block to AF and CHF
Larry Husten, PHD
In people without known cardiovascular (CV) disease the presence of left anterior fascicular block (LAFB) has not been thought to indicate increased risk. Now a research letter published in JAMA finds evidence that elderly people with LAFB are more likely to die and to develop atrial fibrillation (AF) and congestive heart failure (CHF) than people without […]
April 16th, 2013
Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: April 16th
Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP
This week’s topics include fibrinolysis or primary PCI in STEMI, the effect of lower sodium intake on health, and the effect of increased potassium intake on CV risk factors and disease.