February 8th, 2010
Monday February 8 News Roundup: Zero Calcium Score; AHA/ACC Scientific Statement on TdP; Warning on Boston Scientific ICDs
Larry Husten, PHD
What Does a Zero Calcium Score Mean? In a high risk group scheduled for angiography, having a zero calcium score does not mean a zero chance of coronary disease. In a paper appearing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Gottlieb and colleagues obtained calcium scores from 291 patients scheduled for angiography and found that nearly one-fifth of patients with a calcium score of zero had significant obstructions. In an accompanying editorial, Rita Redberg writes that “this apparent lack of predictive value of a CS should be enough to give a clinician pause” and that until calcium screening’s “benefits are clearly established, we must take great care when subjecting patients to it.”
AHA/ACC Scientific Statement on Torsade de Pointes: The ACC and AHA have published a scientific statement on the prevention of Torsade de Pointes in hospitals. The two organizations say that “hospital care providers need to be more aware that cardiac arrest from a medication-induced heart rhythm problem is a rare but potentially catastrophic event in patients.”
Warning on Boston Scientific ICDs– A case report of a weakened header bond in a subcutaneously implanted Cognis ICD may be the first sign of a broader problem with Boston Scientific’s latest generation of ICDs. In December the company issued a product advisory about weakened headers, but only for the small percentage of devices that had been implanted subpectorally. The report by Germano, Darge and William Maisel, appears online in unedited form in Heart Rhythm.
