Cardiology

At a healthcare forum hosted by Politics magazine, current and former members of Congress said they believed President Obama would sign some sort of a healthcare reform package, most likely later this year. “There would be too much political damage done if something doesn’t pass, so Congress will find a way,” said Congressman Michael Burgess, MD (R-TX).

As the media continues to ruminate on the tragic results of violence among youth in Chicago’s south side, I think it might be worth looking at violence in our society as a whole. A new study from the University of New Hampshire suggests that we have yet to really appreciate the amount of violence many children are exposed to.

What is the best way to draw an activated partial thromboplastin time when a patient is receiving heparin therapy and has a central venous catheter?

Results from the PROSPECT trial "shed new light on the types of vulnerable plaque that are most likely to cause sudden, unexpected adverse cardiac events, and on the ability to identify them through imaging techniques before they occur."

I say we should let those who are screaming against the health insurance reform bills because they're "Socialist" opt out - not just from the bills, but also from ALL of "Socialism."

A study presented at the 14th International Headache Congress found that patients who get migraines with aura are at an increased risk for ischemic stroke when compared to patients who do not get migraines.

A study on the prevalence of angina among outpatients with coronary artery disease published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that nearly one-third of patients with stable CAD experienced angina at least once a week.

A case report notes that several studies have linked preinfarction angina with a lower incidence of complications in hospitalized patients, particularly in older patients and in patients with diabetes.

Prasugrel was recently approved by the FDA for a very narrow indication: Percutaneous coronary intervention patients with unstable angina, or MI with or without ST segment elevation.

Patients who suffer from depression in the first several weeks after being hospitalized for a coronary event and those patients whose depression does not improve over six months are at an increased risk of death compared to coronary patients who are not depressed.

According to an article in the online news organization Huffington Post, physicians are increasingly bringing their views on healthcare reform into the examination room.

A task force put together by the European Society of Hypertension has released a new set of guidelines for the management of hypertension in children and adolescents.

Researchers from the Heart Center at Massachusetts General Hospital have discovered that, in patients who are recovering from coronary-artery bypass grafting, high levels of a particular biomarker may be a new prognostic tool for diagnosing heart attacks.

Making the transition from outpatient to inpatient has been thankfully only a slightly “bumpy” road, but it is amazing looking back on how our approach to inpatient diabetes care and hyperglycemia on the whole has changed over the past 10 years.

"The Vine that Ate the South" may one day be known as "The Vine that Fought the Metabolic Syndrome," according to University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers.

CardioDX has completed a multi-center study validating the effectiveness of Corus CAD, the self-billed “first and only gene expression test to quantify the likelihood of obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with stable chest pain.”

Scientists from the University of Heidelberg Hospital have discovered why thicker blood may simultaneously increase and decrease an individual’s risk for heart attack and stroke.

Macrophages taken from vitamin-D-deficient diabetics were more likely to become foam cells, one of the earliest markers of atherosclerosis.

The decreasing age of onset of hypertension in the general population paired with increasing life expectancy has resulted in an increased incidence of this disorder, which will likely culminate in higher rates of morbidity and mortality in the future.

Georgia Tech has been working on an interactive surgical planner that analyzes MRI scans to simulate potential surgical options in pediatric cardiac patients.

Check out these three angina-focused CME.

A team of researchers from the Cardiovascular Research Center in Paria and CIC bioGUNE, an international center for biomedical research discovered that the activation of a cellular protein may be the key to a new treatment for ischemic pathologies.

A recent study shows that “men with angina are twice as likely to have a heart attack and almost three times as likely to suffer a heart disease-related death than women with the same condition.”

Cardiogenic shock continues to be a major complication of acute myocardial infarction, with in-hospital mortality approaching 70% to 80% for patients who are managed medically.

Health officials overseeing the move for health care information technology (HIT) under government incentives are concerned that breaches of EHR systems are a serious possibility and that preventative measures need to be put in place.

Long-term memory loss and cognitive problems that heart bypass patients suffer after surgery are due to the underlying coronary artery disease and not the use of a heart-lung machine during surgery, new research shows.

Michael Jackson's health history is front page news.

Drug-induced diseases and serious adverse drug effects can alter therapeutic plans and greatly affect patient outcomes. Many medications are known to have a narrow therapeutic index and to require close patient monitoring.

New research shows that the rates of serious complications among individuals with type 1 diabetes appear lower than reported historically, especially when patients are treated intensively.

Researchers have found "five genetic variants related to blood pressure in African Americans" that may "provide new clues to treating and preventing hypertension" in African American patients.