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

Thank You, Dr. Messika-Zeitoun!

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.

For my training, I recently started seeing out-clinic patients. One of the challenges I am struggling with is the management of patients with apparently asymptomatic aortic stenosis. This morning, there happened to be a session about this specific topic, so I was very eager to attend.

I was especially pleased with the third speaker. David Messika-Zeitoun offered some very simple solutions for cases where guidelines fail to guide clinical decision-making. Sometimes, echocardiographic data is ambiguous (low aortic valve area with a paradoxical low pressure gradient over the valve) and exercise testing is not possible or inconclusive. He proposed to use quantification of aortic valve calcification, easily determined by non-contrast CT scanning. I will definitely study his paper! Thank you, Dr. Messika-Zeitoun, and thank you, ESC.

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