In much of the world (but not in the U.S.,) drug-coated stents are avoided by cardiologists because of their high cost. To compensate for the inability to use these stents, many cardiologists outside of the U.S. have taken to administering sirolimus (also
Raymond Gibbons, MD (Mayo Clinic, Pres/American Heart Association), said COURAGE trial findings suggest that "hundreds of thousands of Americans with stable angina who received coronary stents did not need them."
Martin Leon, M.D., a leading interventional cardiologist accused of leaking details of a major study weeks before its scheduled release, was barred today from taking part in next year's American College of Cardiology meeting.
A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (ACC/AHA/SCAI Writing Committee to Update the 2001 Guidelines for Percutaneous Coronary Intervention)
Electron Beam CT, or EBCT scans (formerly called ultrafast CT scans) are useful in detecting the presence of calcium deposits in the lining of the coronary arteries. The presence of calcium deposits is a strong indicator that coronary artery disease is al
Surgery does not deal with the basic molecular foundation of disease. It is a mechanical approach to a biologic problem. For those of us who are considered experts in the areas of coronary disease, what an embarrassment to admit that coronary artery disea
Women and Heart Disease The Role of Diabetes and Hyperglycemia Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD; Elsa-Grace V. Giardina, MD; Anselm K. Gitt, MD; Uwe Gudat, MD; Helmut O. Steinberg, MD; Diethelm Tschoepe, MD Arch Intern Med. 2004;164:934-942.
Modern cardiology has given up on curing heart disease. Its aggressive interventions-- coronary artery bypass graft, atherectomy, angioplasty, and stenting--do not reduce the frequency of new heart attacks or prolong survival except in small subsets of pa