CardioExchange Archive

April 21st, 2011

Will a STICH in Time Save Nine?

Anju Nohria, MD and James Fang, MD

A 57-year-old man with a history of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and smoking presented with increasing dyspnea on exertion, mild chest discomfort, and lower-extremity edema. Physical exam results were consistent with decompensated heart failure. Echocardiographic findings: left-ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), 20% LV end-diastolic dimension, 6.3 cm global hypokinesis (with regional variation affecting the septum, inferior wall, and apex most […]

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April 7th, 2011

STICH: What’s the Value of CABG in Patients with LV Dysfunction?

Eric Jose Velazquez, MD

CardioExchange welcomes Eric J. Velazquez, an investigator for the STICH (Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure) trial, results of which were recently published in two articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Velazquez is the lead author of the STICH article that focuses on the clinical value of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) […]

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April 4th, 2011

STICH Illuminates CABG in Heart Failure, Finally

Larry Husten, PHD

After a very long wait, the Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure (STICH) trial has finally shed light on the common but poorly understood use of CABG in heart failure patients with ischemic heart disease. The results were presented by Eric Velazquez at the ACC and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. Some […]

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March 30th, 2011

ACC Preview: A STICH in Time

Eric Jose Velazquez, MD

Eric Velazquez is the principal investigator of the STICH (Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure) trial. He will present the main results of the trial at the Late’Breaking Clinical Trials II session on Monday morning. Velazquez relates the origins of STICH more than a decade ago and discusses some of the fascinating challenges of completing […]

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March 30th, 2011

Many Elderly Patients Excluded from Heart Failure Trials

Larry Husten, PHD

Despite the large and growing burden of heart failure in the elderly population, older people are often excluded from heart failure clinical trials. In a paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Antonio Cherubini and colleagues  examined 251 heart failure trials and found that a quarter of the trials excluded patients by an arbitrary upper […]

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March 2nd, 2011

A DOSE of Reality: The Challenges of Comparing Effectiveness

Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM

An ideal paper for your next journal club — “Diuretic Strategies in Patients with Acute Decompensated Heart Failure” — was just published in NEJM, by the NHLBI Heart Failure Clinical Research Network.  In this study (called DOSE), patients hospitalized with heart failure were randomized to receive different diuretic regimens based on dose and mode of […]

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December 10th, 2010

Heart Failure Death Statistics: Don’t Believe What You Read on the Internet

Mary Knudson, Health Journalist

Well-known science journalist Mary Knudson is the author of HeartSense, a blog about heart failure, from which the following post is taken. In this post, she takes issue with the grim and outdated prognosis data presented to the public by a prominent heart failure website. In its website section on heart failure facts, the Heart Failure Society of America […]

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November 16th, 2010

“Phone It In” Heart-Failure Monitoring Offers No Advantage Over Usual Care

Larry Husten, PHD

CardioExchange welcomes Sarwat I. Chaudhry, first author of an NHLBI-funded trial in which 1653 recently hospitalized heart-failure patients were randomized to telemonitoring or usual care. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, failed to show an advantage of telemonitoring in the primary endpoint: rehospitalization for any reason or death from any cause […]

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November 14th, 2010

New LVAD Shows Promise as Bridge-to-Transplant

Larry Husten, PHD

ADVANCE (Evaluation of the HeartWare HVAD Left Ventricular Assist Device System for the Treatment of Advanced Heart Failure) evaluated the clinical efficacy of a novel small centrifugal flow pump as a bridge-to-transplant. In the trial, 140 patients who received the device were compared to a contemporaneous control group of 499 similar patients who had received a commercially […]

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November 14th, 2010

A Life-RAFT for Patients with HF?

Arthur J. Moss, MD

CardioExchange welcomes Arthur Moss, Professor of Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and lead investigator of the MADIT-CRT trial, to discuss his New England Journal of Medicine editorial on the RAFT trial, in which patients with mild-to-moderate HF were randomized to receive either an ICD alone or ICD plus CRT.  It seems […]

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