Cardiology

A recent study suggests that high salt intake is closely associated with elevated risks of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

With the amount of information we are hit with day in and day out, our minds need a way of quickly triaging it. This is what stereotyping does. But let's not confuse stereotyping with prejudice. The latter is negative and the former doesn't have to be.

Depression affects 20-40 percent of heart failure patients and is often linked to loss of motivation/ interest/confidence, lower quality of life, sleep disturbances, and changes in appetite with related weight changes.

In cardioverting a patient with atrial fibrillation, physicians accidentally overstimulated an implanted vagal nerve stimulator, harming the patient.

Even in hospital settings patients can suffer fatal cardiac events if they are not properly monitored. This is especially true at night when staffing numbers drop and families are not with their loved ones until morning.

A new prospective study supports retrospective analyses that link central sleep apnea and Cheyne Stokes respiration with the onset of atrial fibrillation in older men, particularly those age 75 years and older.

Patients suffering from the most common hereditary bleeding disorder von Willebrand disease (VWD) also undergoing surgical procedures are recommended specific treatment methods to manage perioperative anticoagulation.

There may be a link between the inflammatory proteins that cause rheumatoid arthritis and the development of heart valve disease.

Moderate consumption of alcohol can lower the risk of ischemic stroke, Korean researchers report.

Conditions like asthma and seasonal allergies can start when a patient is very young and stay with them throughout the course of their lives. As a result careful monitoring and treatment can greatly help improve the quality of life for those patients.

Retrospective analysis of real-world outcomes supports the use of the Amplatzer cardiac plug for left atrial appendage closure in atrial fibrillation patients with a very high risk of stroke or serious bleeds and who cannot tolerate oral anticoagulation.

Always a brewing topic, coffee drinking has been linked to a lower risk of dying from heart disease.

Study results suggest that gout itself and not hyperuricemia alone is associated with left ventricular diastolic dysfunction and left atrial volume enlargement.

For children born with single ventricle defects every day matters in getting the treatment and operations they need to survive. A new study looked at a commonly known medication which could help get them extra time for their treatment.

As more is learned about the affect of newly developed PCSK9 medications cardiologists are looking at new patient populations and how to provide them the highest quality care.

The long-awaited SPRINT trial not only included patients that are often left out of clinical studies, it also provided physicians with much-needed guidance on more effective blood pressure management strategies.

I'm always fascinated by the Medscape physician reports every year and seeing how unhappy physicians are. How burnt out they are. How dissatisfied with their careers they are.

In non-diabetic patients, researchers have shown sirolimus-eluting stents to be more effective than paclitaxel-eluting stents, leading to better clinical outcomes. Some researchers believe that T2DM attenuates the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway. This could influence the choice of stents, and has created a controversy.

Severe hypoglycemia is a complication of insulin use that occurs in 20% of insulin-treated patients on a monthly basis. A small number of these patients become unconscious or seize as a result of severe hypoglycemia. Hospitals are prepared to intervene, but often in the community, a Good Samaritan needs to reconstitute and injection dry powder formulations of subcutaneous and intramuscular glucagon for unconscious or seizing patients.

Despite the many glucose monitoring and insulin delivery devices that are available, many diabetics who use them remain uncontrolled and experience hypoglycemia. Researchers dream of the day that drug-device combinations will track diabetics' glucose levels and deliver appropriate insulin dose.

Leptin (an adipocyte-secreted hormone) has been an object of observation since 1994. Its levels in the body are roughly proportional to an individual's amount of adipose tissue. It seems to regulate energy homeostasis, decrease energy intake, and increase energy expenditure. From its discovery, researchers hoped that its manipulation could be useful clinically.

Omelet lovers, I apologize for this one in advance.

When patients have a defibrillator implated they have many concerns about their overall health, including how it affects their sex life. Research has shown the importance of doctors and their patients working together through these issues.

While warfarin has long been a common treatment option for patients with atrial fibrillation new medications are coming to the market which provide different benefits than the original option.

Analyses of patient records indicate that obesity increases the risk of recurrence among patients who undergo ablation for atrial fibrillation but suggest that sustained weight loss can reduce the risk.

Automatic external defibrillators are becoming more common throughout the country and the world helping to save countless lives. However with some devices not available at all times of the day there are questions about how they could be used more effectively

The Framingham Heart Study has been one of the most in depth studies in the field of cardiology and medicine as a whole. A recent portion of the study looked at the impact of carbon monoxide exhalation and its role in patient health.

Highly trained female athletes showed no sign of a negative effect on their hearts after intense workouts--contradicting studies that found such maximal excercise can be counter-productive, researchers said at the AHA meeting in Orlando, FL.

Heart disease presents differently in women, and a drug for angina that works for most men did not help most women with their angina, researchers reported today.

Injecting globs of a biopolymer based on brown algae into the heart muscle of patients with advanced heart disease helped halt or reverse disease. The procedure is meant to thicken the ventricle wall. That reduces pumping stress.