CardioExchange Archive

February 15th, 2013

Amid Rising Tide of Diabetes More Patients Reach Treatment Goals

Larry Husten, PHD

There’s a glimmer of good news amidst all the recent bad news about diabetes. Although the prevalence of diabetes has doubled over the last generation, more people today are reaching their treatment goals than in the past. New data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), published online today in Diabetes Care, show that efforts to control hemoglobin […]

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January 28th, 2013

Study Warns Against Dual Blockade of Renin-Angiotensin System in Heart Failure and Hypertension

Larry Husten, PHD

The enormous success of ACE inhibitors in hypertension and heart failure spurred hope that adding a second drug to block the renin-angiotensin system would yield improved outcomes. Although definitive evidence supporting dual blockade of the renin-angiotensin system has never been found, more than 200,000 patients in the U.S. currently receive this therapy. Now a large new meta-analysis […]

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January 22nd, 2013

Renal Denervation: Delineating Its Uses, Misuses, and Possibilities

Murray David Esler, MBBS PhD and John Ryan, MD

Is Renal Denervation a cure? A likely overused “magic bullet” in patients who should receive more behavior modification and drug treatment? Where exactly should it fit in our arsenal? John Ryan interviews Murray David Esler

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December 18th, 2012

Promising One-Year Results for Renal Denervation in Resistant Hypertension

Larry Husten, PHD

Denervation of the renal sympathetic nerve may become an important new tool in the fight against resistant hypertension.  Previously, the main results of the Symplicity HTN-2 trial demonstrated that in selected patients renal denervation resulted in a large and highly significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (BP) at six months. Now, longer followup from the trial, published in Circulation, […]

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December 7th, 2012

Should Body Weight Influence Choice of Antihypertensive Therapy?

Larry Husten, PHD

The hypertension field has been troubled by repeated observations that normal weight patients have more cardiovascular (CV) events than obese patients. Now a new analysis of a large hypertension trial confirms this finding but also suggests that it may be explained by either an adverse effect of diuretics or a protective effect of calcium-channel blockers in non-obese hypertensives. […]

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November 23rd, 2012

Undiagnosed Hypertension in Younger Adults

Heather M Johnson, MD, MS

Dr. Johnson answers questions about her research group’s study of undiagnosed hypertension in younger adults.

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October 15th, 2012

Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: October 15th

Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP

This week’s topics include PCI use in states with public reporting of outcomes; proneurotensin as a prognostic marker for CVD, diabetes, and mortality; vorapaxar for secondary prevention of thrombotic events in patients with previous MI; and atenolol vs. metoprolol for hypertension.

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September 12th, 2012

Study Predicts Renal Denervation Will Be Cost-Effective in Resistant Hypertension

Larry Husten, PHD

Renal denervation (RDN) for resistant hypertension may be cost-effective and may provide long-term clinical benefits, according to a new analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Benjamin Geisler and colleagues developed a model to predict the impact of the Medtronic Symplicity RDN system in patients with resistant hypertension. Over 10 years, according to […]

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September 10th, 2012

Antihypertensive Use Among Pregnant Women on the Rise

Larry Husten, PHD

Growing numbers of pregnant women are taking antihypertensive drugs that may harm themselves or their babies, according to a new study published in Hypertension. Brian Bateman and colleagues analyzed Medicaid data on more than 1.1 million pregnant women from 2000 to 2007. Overall, 4.4% of the women received antihypertensive medications at some point during their pregnancy. During […]

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September 4th, 2012

CDC: Nearly 36 Million Americans Have Uncontrolled Hypertension

Larry Husten, PHD

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) show: 30.4% of U.S. adults (an estimated 66.9 million people) have hypertension. Of those with hypertension, 53.5% have uncontrolled hypertension (about 35.8 million people). 39.4% with uncontrolled hypertension (about 14.1 million) are unaware that they have hypertension. 89.4% with […]

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