‘Somebody has finally twigged that the heart and the lungs are joined up to each other and live in this space called the chest…’

Here are a few gems from Richard Lehman’s weekly cardiovascular literature review. Read the whole thing on CardioExchange.

On a JAMA study showing that ramipril increases walking time in patients with intermittent claudication:

This is the kind of trial that makes nobody millions of dollars, but which we should all be doing in our fields of interest. It took just three interested hospitals in Southern Australia.

On a NEJM study studying rivaroxaban in acutely ill medical patients:

Rule One for selling reprints is that you make the conclusion of the Abstract as favourable as possible, because this is all that most clinicians read…

On a Lancet study showing a close association between pneumonia and cardiovascular disease:

Golly, somebody has finally twigged that the heart and the lungs are joined up to each other and live in this space called the chest, or thorax. This could have major implications. We could start thinking of providing services for elderly breathless patients rather than making them wander from chest physicians to cardiologists and back again: we could tackle the problem of the post-hospital syndrome by attending to the cardiovascular risks of chest infections and the right ventricular contribution to heart failure; we could even ask patients what their main problems are and whether they are sufficiently addressed to make them feel safe at home. But all this requires a level of genius far beyond the reach of any known health service.