CardioExchange Archive

CardioExchange, an NEJM practice community for medical professionals dedicated to improving cardiac patient care, was active from 2009 to 2015. CardioExchange fostered discussion between clinicians from across the globe.

September 1st, 2013

A TASTE of Today and Tomorrow

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending ESC.13 in Amsterdam this week are blogging for CardioExchange. The Fellows include Paddy Barrett, Louis Handoko, and  Amanda Vest. For more of our ESC.13 coverage of late-breaking clinical trials, interviews with the authors of the most important research, and blogs from our fellows on the most interesting presentations at the meeting, check out our Coverage Headquarters.

Last night, I had a disbelieving discussion with a more senior colleague about how he went about undertaking a literature search in years gone by without the aid of electronic assistance. Thumbing through index cards, sifting through mountains of paper and struggling to find the papers most pertinent to your research question. Today, we communicate and explore data at the speed of light, refining our exact questions with ever more precise filters. Information has never before been as accessible and in a more digestible format.

In somewhat of a parallel theme, those who conducted large scale clinical trials in the past appeared remote and inaccessible, and I must applaud the ESC for the “meet the trialist” sessions. Watching an almost fireside discussion on the TASTE trial with the lead investigators very much brought home the degree of access we now have to those who conduct these influential trials and how much things have evolved over the years. I wonder in years to come will I be in awe at a junior colleague’s access to information, or to those who are conducting trials, and what indeed that will look like?

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