{"id":39384,"date":"2013-10-15T10:54:48","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T14:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=39384"},"modified":"2013-10-15T10:56:26","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T14:56:26","slug":"questions-remain-about-george-w-bushs-stent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/10\/15\/questions-remain-about-george-w-bushs-stent\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions Remain About George W Bush’s Stent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Journal<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>reported yesterday that “George W. Bush’s recent heart problems were far more dangerous than generally believed — potentially life-threatening, in fact.” The Journal\u00a0<\/em>cited\u00a0“an authoritative source”:<\/p>\n

“He was more than 95% occluded. With a blockage like that in a main artery you’re supposed to die. He was pretty lucky they caught it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the Nightly News<\/em><\/a>” broadcast Brian Williams said that NBC news had “confirmed” the report.<\/p>\n

But it is impossible to know for certain precisely what Bush had. I am assuming that he was discovered to have a positive exercise test at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas.\u00a0First, what are the details of the supposedly \u201cworrisome changes\u201d on the electrocardiogram? Was the test, in fact, markedly positive, or just positive? Positive at a low workload or at a high workload? Symptomatic during the test or not?<\/p>\n

Second, what coronary artery had the 95% stenosis? They imply that it was his left anterior descending, but I can\u2019t be certain. Was it his left main (in which case PCI or CABG would be appropriate even in the absence of symptoms)?<\/p>\n

I don’t think news organizations should report “new” information like this that doesn’t really help us better understand the indication for the procedure. What do other\u00a0CardioExchange<\/i>\u00a0members think about this issue?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Journal\u00a0reported yesterday that “George W. Bush’s recent heart problems were far more dangerous than generally believed — potentially life-threatening, in fact.” The Journal\u00a0cited\u00a0“an authoritative source”: “He was more than 95% occluded. With a blockage like that in a main artery you’re supposed to die. He was pretty lucky they caught it.” On the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9],"tags":[1913,956,437],"class_list":["post-39384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-interventional-cardiology","tag-george-w-bush","tag-media","tag-stents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}