Skeptics and the Pandemic

I recently posted the following thread on Twitter: I am so disappointed by the large number of pre-pandemic medical skeptics who have now turned into mask/vaccine skeptics. I largely agreed with many of them back in the day. /1 Pre-pandemic they used their skills and intelligence to rightfully question whether, say, a stent should be inserted…

Click here to continue reading…

Should the ACC Have a Live Meeting?

I was surprised to learn from a recent press release that the American College of Cardiology is planning to have some live participants at its annual scientific sessions meeting in May. The college said it is also partnering with a technology company to offer these participants a wearable monitoring device “as an added safety measure…

Click here to continue reading…

The Defense of Science in the Age of Fake News

Fake news didn’t just become a problem because of Trump, or the pandemic. It’s been around for a long while. The problem can’t begin to be solved unless the medical and scientific community accepts that it has an absolute responsibility to aggressively debunk fake news and defend and support scientific principles. Click here to read…

Click here to continue reading…

Cardiology Research: Business As Usual During the Pandemic

At this moment in time the pre-pandemic cardiology research agenda needs to be completely reprioritized. There are two broad areas that now take precedence over all existing research concerns. On the one hand, researchers need to achieve a better understanding of the staggering incidence of deferred or delayed treatment of cardiovascular events and conditions as…

Click here to continue reading…

A COVID-19 Cardiac MRI Study: What Went Wrong?

We still don’t know what COVID-19 is doing to the heart or how we should be investigating it and treating it. Last month JAMA Cardiology published a German cohort study of 100 patients recently recovered from COVID-19… A number of striking problems with the study were noted on Twitter……

Click here to continue reading…

Don’t Confuse the Art and Science of Medicine: PCI vs CABG for Left Main Disease

It is often said that medicine is both an art and a science. In an imperfect world this is both inevitable and desirable. But it is extremely important that the two should not be confused with each other. In particular, because the “science” side of the equation has achieved overwhelming prestige and authority, it is…

Click here to continue reading…

News About CardioBrief and CVCTCardioBrief

Note to readers: After a period of inactivity CardioBrief is coming back, but with some big differences. This website, CardioBrief.Org, will remain my personal website. A new website, CVCTCardiobrief.com, will be the new home for my “professional” blogging activities. To develop this website I have joined forces with the global CVCT Forum. I look forward to…

Click here to continue reading…

No, CRISPR Is Not Going To ‘Cure’ Heart Disease

No, CRISPR gene editing technology is not going to “cure” heart disease. But a New York Times story by Gina Kolata on an extremely early study in animals prominently plays up just this extremely unlikely claim. The Times story is based on a press release issued by Verve Therapeutics, a new biotechnology company founded by Sekar Kathiresan, an influential cardiologist and genomic…

Click here to continue reading…

What Can We Learn From The Apple Heart Study?

Do we ever learn from our past mistakes? For many years we believed that technology was an inevitable force for good. It would give us instant access to a near infinite amount of information and allow us to easily and instantly connect with nearly anyone on earth. What could go wrong? The answer is that…

Click here to continue reading…

Health Hype Alert: Beware the Apple Watch

This morning STAT published an Op-Ed piece I wrote about the Apple Watch. Here’s how it starts: Set your smartwatch alarm. You’re about to be barraged by tons of hype about the health benefits of the Apple Watch. Unfortunately, it won’t include essential information and data that can put these claims in proper perspective. Last year,…

Click here to continue reading…

The Simple Truth About Fake Medical News

Note: This is a slightly revised version of a talk I delivered at the recent CVCT Conference in Washington, DC.  Why are we vulnerable to fake news and why is it so hard to get rid of it? This is a complex question, but one important factor is that fake news delivers clear and simple…

Click here to continue reading…

Questions Raised About Invokana Label Expansion For CV Risk Reduction

It hasn’t received a lot of media attention but on Tuesday the FDA approved an expansion of the canagliflozin (Invokana, Janssen) label to include a reduction in the risk of heart attack, stroke, or CV death in adults with type 2 diabetes and established CV disease. Canagliflozin, an oral SGLT2 inhibitor, thus becomes the third…

Click here to continue reading…

Cardiovascular Research Foundation Blocks Press Access to TCT2018 Meeting

(Updated) The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) has denied press credentials for the TCT2018 meeting to a legitimate, fully accredited journalist. The meeting, which starts this weekend in San Diego, is the premiere interventional cardiology meeting. Legitimate journalists are routinely granted access to cover medical and scientific meetings. By any standard, Cat Ferguson is a respected and…

Click here to continue reading…

What Happens When A Healthy 86-Year-Old Gets Atrial Fibrillation

Editor’s note: 86-year-old Nina Mishkin was still healthy and active when she went to Dublin, Ireland last September. After she returned home she developed atrial fibrillation, and then much more. “I never felt particularly vulnerable and fragile before,” she writes. “Now I do… It’s a different universe I inhabit.” I am grateful to Nina for giving…

Click here to continue reading…

No, A Big NIH Trial Did Not Show That Lowering Blood Pressure Will Prevent Dementia

It’s “breakthrough” time again. News reports out of the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) this week have been relentlessly upbeat and positive about findings from the NIH’s SPRINT MIND study. The message: aggressive blood pressure control can help protect the brain. But unless you look very carefully at the news reports and “expert” statements you won’t…

Click here to continue reading…

Warning: Pirate Sites Are Now Kidnapping Doctors Booking Hotels At Medical Meetings

Pirates are attacking interventional cardiology meetings. Interventional cardiologists planning to attend the upcoming TCT meeting should be aware that at least one pirate web site is out to dupe them. (The annual TCT meeting, which runs this year in San Diego from September 21-25, is the première meeting for interventional cardiologists.) The pirates are trying…

Click here to continue reading…

1 in 4 Cardiovascular Patients in Low Income Families Have Significant Financial Pain

Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Khurram Nassir, a cardiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the senior author of a new paper in JAMA Cardiology, “Association of Out-of-Pocket Annual Health Expenditures With Financial Hardship in Low-Income Adults With Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in the United States.” 1 in 4 Cardiovascular…

Click here to continue reading…

On Cannibals And Cardiologists

Everyone knows that cannibalism was practiced widely in pre-Colombian Mexico. Go online and you will quickly learn that 15,000 to 20,000 Aztecs were sacrificed each year. This “fact” colors our view of that civilization, and makes it a bit easier to give a pass to the conquistadors who, for all their own rapacity, brought “civilization”…

Click here to continue reading…

Outsiders Swoop In Vowing To Rescue Rural Hospitals Short On Hope — And Money

Editor’s note: the following article is reprinted with permission from Kaiser Health News. Links to previous CardioBrief coverage of the laboratory scandal story can be found at the bottom of the page. by Barbara Feder Ostrov, Kaiser Health News CEDARVILLE, Calif. — Beau Gertz faced a crowd of worried locals at this town’s senior center,…

Click here to continue reading…

New ORBITA Findings May Offer Modest Symptomatic Pain Relief To Interventional Cardiologists

New data presented at EuroPCR from the much debated ORBITA trial may provide some modest temporary lessening of the pain felt by interventional cardiologists in response to the initial negative ORBITA findings. But the pain relief is likely to be only temporary, and might even be fairly compared to a placebo effect, since the major…

Click here to continue reading…

NIH Halts Large Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction (CIRT) Trial

The NHLBI has put an early stop to the large Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction (CIRT) Trial. The NHLBI action was based on a recommendation from the trial’s Data and Safety Monitoring Board. The action was not based on any substantive safety concerns. “Sometime in late March or early April the NHLBI informed me that there were no substantive…

Click here to continue reading…

Salt War Opponents Unite In Call For Randomized Trial In Prisons

The opposing camps in the salt wars don’t agree on much, but they have now found common ground in their belief that the only way to settle the salt question is with a large randomized controlled trial. Further, they now agree that it would be nearly impossible to perform such a trial in the real…

Click here to continue reading…

American Heart Association Venture Capital Fund Sparks Criticism

(Updated) The American Heart Association has announced that it has launched a $30 million venture capital fund “designed to spur healthcare innovation in heart disease and stroke care.” The AHA said that the Cardeation Capital fund will be funded by the AHA and co-investors Philips and UPMC. The fund “will invest in emerging healthcare companies that can…

Click here to continue reading…

CABANA: No Outcomes Benefit In First Big Trial Of AF Ablation

(Updated) Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) produced no significant improvement in clinical outcomes in a large and important new clinical trial. CABANA is the first and long anticipated randomized controlled trial of AF ablation in the more than two decade long history of the procedure. The results will likely spark an intense controversy in…

Click here to continue reading…

More Controversy Over Major Cardiology Clinical Trial

Think about this: A new article reports that a major NIH-funded trial runs into trouble. The article raises all sorts of fundamental questions about our ability to perform meaningful clinical research. But instead of expressing concern about these legitimate problems, medical leaders ignore these questions and instead focus their ire and criticism on the article authors,…

Click here to continue reading…