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July 22, 2008 — A new fissure is creeping through the cardiology community, dividing those in favor of risk-factor screening and prevention on one side from those who advocate early screening for the disease itself. The debate is playing out online July 29, 2008 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, with Drs Jay Cohn and Daniel Duprez (University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis) arguing in favor of early identification of disease through simple screening tests, and Drs Philip Greenland and Donald Lloyd-Jones (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL) urging clinicians to focus on risk factors and steer clear of...

Apart from its sadness, Tim Russert’s death this month at 58 was deeply unsettling to many people who, like him, had been earnestly following their doctors’ advice on drugs, diet and exercise in hopes of avoiding a heart attack. Mr. Russert, the moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC News, took blood pressure and cholesterol pills and aspirin, rode an exercise bike, had yearly stress tests and other exams and was dutifully trying to lose weight. But he died of a heart attack anyway. An article in The New York Times last week about his medical care led to e-mail...

Given the great strides that have been made in preventing and treating heart disease, what explains Tim Russert’s sudden death last week at 58 from a heart attack? The answer, at least in part, is that although doctors knew that Mr. Russert, the longtime moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC, had coronary artery disease and were treating him for it, they did not realize how severe the disease was because he did not have chest pain or other telltale symptoms that would have justified the kind of invasive tests needed to make a definitive diagnosis. In that sense, his...

As a believer, I always see miracles and good things when God and prayer are involved. Tommorrow, at 1030hrs CST, my mother, Ann Bryan, will undergo heart surgery to replace/repair her mitrol valve in her left ventricle. She has been in the hospital for ten (10) days at Baptist Hospital in Little Rock, AR under intensive antibiotics for a diagnosis of endocarditis caused by a strep infection in her blood, and on her heart valve. Anyways, we believe in the power of prayer, and I have personally witnessed miracles here on FR. Any additional prayers sent her way would be...

The tiny stent sparked a lucrative industry--and made Dr. Samin Sharma a star. Then questions arose about the device's safety and efficacy. On a sweltering summer morning, Dr. Samin K. Sharma marches into the cardiology wing of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, prepared for a 16-hour day in which he will clear and repair the arteries of 18 patients. Sharma specializes in installing stents, tiny metal devices that hold open blocked blood vessels. As he'll be the first to note, he does more stent procedures than anyone else in doctor-rich New York and possibly in the entire country. An...

How listening to an iPod could stop your pacemaker workingBy DANIEL MARTIN - More by this author » Last updated at 23:27pm on 11th May 2007  Ipods can cause pacemakers to malfunction by making them go too fast, too slow or even stop altogether, according to a study. Researchers found that iPods could make pacemakers malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart rate. As a result, the pacemaker was unable to effectively monitor how fast the heart was beating, making it unable to regulate its speed. The study may concern the increasing number of older people...

Giving heart-attack patients a dose of "super aspirin" before rather than during a procedure to restore blood flow to the heart could save tens of thousands of lives a year, new research suggests. In a major international study presented yesterday at a meeting here of the European Society of Cardiology, scientists found that giving heart attack victims the drug Plavix when they arrive at the emergency room almost halved the risk of a stroke, a repeated heart attack or death within the first month after angioplasty. Angioplasty, a procedure where doctors thread a needle through the blood vessels and implant...