CardioExchange Archive

August 25th, 2011

“Numbers Traps” in Clinical Practice

John E Brush, MD

As we make clinical decisions every day, we assess probabilities in a subjective fashion. And in doing so, we tend to fall into very predictable traps — traps we can get better at avoiding if we learn about how they ensnare us. That requires familiarizing ourselves with a bit of history. Several decades ago Casscells […]

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August 24th, 2011

Ambulatory BP Monitoring Gains NICE Recommendation in UK

Larry Husten, PHD

Ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitoring is receiving a strong endorsement in the UK from NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). The recommendation is based on a cost-effectiveness study published in the Lancet. Kate Lovibond and colleagues found that compared with additional measurements in the clinic or home measurements, ABP monitoring was highly cost-effective in patients […]

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August 23rd, 2011

William Kannel, Former Framingham Heart Study Director, Dead at 87

Larry Husten, PHD

William Kannel, the cardiovascular epidemiologist who helped find most of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease during his lifelong association with the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), died on Saturday at the age of 87. Indeed, Kannel coined the term “risk factor” in a 1961 article in Annals of Internal Medicine. Kannel “made the courageous […]

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August 22nd, 2011

CNN, ABC, and NBC Dumb Down the News About CV Screening

Larry Husten, PHD

An analysis of recent health news coverage in the mainstream media: “Exit complexity. Enter stupidity.”

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August 18th, 2011

Are Interventionalists Getting Too Far “A Head”?

Richard A. Lange, MD, MBA and L. David Hillis, MD

Nallamothu and colleagues have performed an observational analysis of Medicare data on fee-for-service beneficiaries undergoing carotid stenting between 2005 and 2007 in 306 hospital referral regions (HRRs). First, they determined how often carotid stenting was performed by different specialists (i.e., cardiologists, surgeons, radiologists) within each HRR, then they compared utilization rates and 30-day outcomes of the procedure across HRRs. What did they […]

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August 17th, 2011

E-doctoring?

Heather M Johnson, MD, MS

The possibilities — and the limits — of giving medical advice online

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August 17th, 2011

How Cardiologists Think

John E Brush, MD

Today on CardioExchange, we launch a new mini-series of blog posts on decision making in cardiology. Dr. John E. Brush explores the conscious and unconscious mental strategies that cardiologists use in their everyday work and asks you to examine your own decision-making processes. The aim: to foster a rich dialogue about how we do what we […]

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August 12th, 2011

The Third Year

John Ryan, MD, James De Lemos, MD and Andrew M. Kates, MD

For most cardiology fellowships, the bulk of the clinical training is in the first two years. The third year is rather variable, with some fellows taking the time to get to level two certification in several of the subspecialties. Fellows going into interventional fellowships typically spend time in the catheterization lab to increase their skills. […]

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August 9th, 2011

New Study Finds Wide Variation Among Hospitals in Diagnostic Yield for Angiography

Larry Husten, PHD

Last year a report in the New England Journal of Medicine from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) raised concerns about the low diagnostic yield for diagnostic coronary angiography. Now a new analysis of the NCDR registry appearing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds a great deal of variability among hospitals […]

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August 8th, 2011

Bernadine Healy, First Woman to Head the NIH, Dead of Brain Tumor

Larry Husten, PHD

Bernadine Healy, a cardiologist who was the first woman to head the NIH, died on Saturday from complications of a brain tumor. She was married to cardiac surgeon Floyd Loop, a former CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. She had two daughters, one from a previous marriage. Healy was born in 1944 and grew up in […]

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