Editor’s note: Ethan Weiss, MD, is a cardiologist at the University of California at San Francisco. He recently tweeted his thoughts after interviewing applicants for his hospital’s cardiology fellowship. Here is a lightly edited version of his thread. Just finished cardiology fellowship interviews for the season – a few thoughts: Career path: Still fewer applicants…
Cardiology Is Dead. Long Live Public Health.
September 7, 2017 by 8 Comments
Cardiology is dead. Here’s two new important pieces of evidence: The FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee hasn’t met since April 2015, and even then it was for the decidedly uninspiring drug cangrelor. And the committee has no meetings scheduled for the rest of this year. Take a look at the list of late-breaking…
Debaters At Interventional Cardiology Meeting Literally Put The Gloves On
October 30, 2016 by 1 Comment
The world’s premiere interventional cardiology meeting now features cardiologists wearing boxing shorts and gloves. The Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting in Washington, DC kicked off with a “Saturday Night Fights” theme for its debate session, and the participants– nearly all greying, eminent male interventional cardiologists– adopted the theme whole-heartedly. All lovey-dovey at the start of #TCT2016 fights pic.twitter.com/upGprIcxkQ…
Some Come To Bury The Stethoscope, Some To Praise It
January 15, 2016 by 1 Comment
Is the stethoscope still an essential tool of modern medicine or is it an obsolete low-tech vestige of an antiquated era? There is, to say the least, a wide variety of opinions on the topic. On the one hand, technology enthusiasts argue that the stethoscope should be replaced by portable ultrasound devices. “The stethoscope’s 200th birthday should…
Cardiology in 2013: Like A Wrecking Ball
December 26, 2013 by 1 Comment
Perhaps I’m being overdramatic but I think the best metaphor for the year in cardiology is Miley Cyrus on the wrecking ball. The Guidelines Wrecking Ball: Like Hannah Montana guidelines are supposed to be boring and reliable. But in 2013 the guidelines were more like Miley Cyrus. Like a wrecking ball, the NIH abandoned its long-entrenched and highly influential role in producing…
FDA Spanks 23andMe, Grants Breakthrough Status To Factor Xa Inhibitor, and Approves Promus Premier Stent
November 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
It was a busy morning at the FDA. Three new FDA actions may be of considerable interest in the cardiology universe: FDA Halts 23andMe Personal Genome Test– The FDA sent a scathing letter to 23andMe ordering the company to stop selling its Personal Genome Service (PGS) test. The FDA highlighted two cardiology-related uses of PGS as “particularly concerning,”…
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Stents In The News
October 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Three big stent stories were in the news today. You’d never know that all 3 were about the same topic. The Ugly The ugly side of stents is emphasized in David Armstrong’s Bloomberg News story on Mehmood Patel, the Louisiana interventional cardiologist serving a 10-year prison sentence for Medicare fraud. These days Patel “leads health-conscious inmates on…
FDA Approves First New Atherectomy Device In 20 Years
October 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The FDA today granted PMA approval to the Diamondback 360 Coronary Orbital Atherectomy System (OAS) for the treatment of severely calcified coronary arteries. Cardiovascular Systems, the manufacturer of the device, said that the OAS was the first new coronary atherectomy system to receive FDA approval in 2 decades. The company said it would begin a controlled launch of the…
A Paper In The American Journal Of Cardiology About A Study That Was ‘Not Real’
October 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
New allegations about scientific misconduct have been raised about a cardiology group in a hospital in Italy. Some of the allegations come from a surprising source: Maria Grazia Modena, the former and highly prominent chief of cardiology at the hospital where the research was said to have been performed. The new allegations are the latest…
Could Terrorists Have Hacked Dick Cheney’s ICD?
October 19, 2013 by 3 Comments
It happened in Homeland. Could it happen in real life? In a 60 Minutes segment scheduled for broadcast tomorrow, Dick Cheney says that his doctors turned off the wireless function of his implanted cardiac defibrillator (ICD) “in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock,” according to the Associated Press. Years later, Cheney…
Former ACC CEO Takes Reins Of Cardiovascular Research Foundation
October 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) announced today that it had appointed Jack Lewin as its next President and Chief Executive Officer. Lewin is the former CEO of the American College of Cardiology. In April 2012 the ACC announced his abrupt departure from the college. No explanation was ever given for the sudden change. … Click here to read the full…
A Vision Unfulfilled: Reflections On The Death Of TheHeart.Org (1999-2013)
October 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
(Updated, October 25–) On Friday, September 20 the cardiology website TheHeart.Org died. It lost its separate and unique identity and became a part of Medscape (which is owned by WebMD). I played a part in the founding and development of TheHeart.Org (THO) and I mourn its loss. What follows is some of that story and why…
Can Inflating A Blood Pressure Cuff Improve Outcomes Following Bypass Surgery?
August 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2013/08/15/can-inflating-a-blood-pressure-cuff-improve-outcomes-following-bypass-surgery/ For several decades cardiologists have been intrigued by the concept of ischemic preconditioning. A small body of research has consistently found that brief episodes of ischemia (in which reduced blood flow results in damage to tissue) appeared to somehow prepare the body to better handle a major episode of ischemia. Now a new study…
Hot Line Trials For European Society Of Cardiology Congress Announced
June 18, 2013 by 1 Comment
The European Society of Cardiology has published the full program for the 2013 Congress taking place in Amsterdam from August 31 through September 4. There will be 4 Hot Line Sessions. Here is the schedule for Hot Line trials: … Click here to read the full post on Forbes. …
New Trend? Free Tablet Computers For All Registrants At TCT Meeting
June 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Cardiologists and others who attend this year’s TCT meeting in San Francisco will receive a free tablet computer. TCT is the highly influential interventional cardiology meeting run by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation. This year it will take place in San Francisco from October 27 through November 1. Heavily promoted in emails and on the site’s webpage, TCT is promising that…
Dramatic Increase in Use of Radial Artery Access for PCI in the U.S.
June 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In the last six years interventional cardiologists have dramatically increased their use of radial access for PCI, according to a retrospective study published in Circulation. Using data from the CathPCI registry on more than 2.8 million procedures between January 2007 and September 2012, Dmitriy Feldman and colleagues found that radial access PCI increased 13-fold, from a negligible 1.2% at the beginning of the study…
Are Most People With Complex Coronary Disease Getting The Best Treatment?
February 22, 2013 by 1 Comment
The relative value of PCI (stents) and bypass surgery for the treatment of people with blocked coronary arteries has been a topic of intense interest and debate for more than a generation now. Over time, the less invasive and more patient-friendly (and less scary) PCI has become the more popular procedure, but the surgeons (who…
400 Patients Sue Kentucky Hospital and 11 Cardiologists Over Unnecessary Procedures
February 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
After undergoing more than two dozen cardiac procedures over a period of twenty years at St. Joseph Hospital in London, Kentucky, a patient was told by an outside cardiologist in Lexington that a recent procedure had been performed unnecessarily on an artery that was barely blocked. “I would have not carried out this procedure,” the…
Should Radial Artery Access Be The Default Choice For PCI?
February 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Over on CardioExchange six cardiologists, from fellows to senior faculty, talk about whether radial artery access should be the “default choice for PCI: Megan Coylewright, MD, MPH (interventional fellow, Mayo Clinic): …radial PCI should be a part of every interventionalist’s toolkit… Micah Eimer, MD (cardiologist, Glenview, IL): The data are pretty convincing on the lower rate of…
2012 In Review: Social Media In Cardiology
December 23, 2012 by 6 Comments
For a whole variety of reasons most cardiologists are not really comfortable diving into social media. For some reason they’re more comfortable remaining poolside, reading Braunwald or the latest mini JACC or Circulation than writing a blog or interacting with each other or their patients on Facebook or Twitter. Most cardiologists who do get their feet wet send out a few…
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