Will there really be an impending shortage of cardiologists?
There can be little doubt that the lethal combination of aging baby boomers, the obesity epidemic, and the growing success of medical and interventional therapies for CV disease (resulting in more and...
View ArticleTreating atrial fibrillation with catheter ablation on TV may not be ethical
Mauricio Arruda performed a live atrial fibrillation ablation at University Hospitals in Cleveland on the Today Show recently. The 6-minute segment was relentlessly upbeat. The TV producers pulled...
View ArticleWhy rosiglitazone would not have been approved today
Avandia continues to dominate cardiovascular-related news this week. Recently, the AHA and the ACC issued a highly detailed, thoughtful, though perhaps slightly over-diplomatic science advisory on TZDs...
View ArticlePeer review may require random over-reads
“Let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s every doctor’s favorite Shakespeare quote. And if you’re giving a talk to doctors there’s no better way to get the audience on your side than by starting with a...
View ArticlePhysicians have no excuse for years of unread echocardiograms
At least 200 patients whose echocardiograms went unread by a cardiologist for as long as three years have died, according to a new article in the New York Times by Anemona Hartocollis. Equally...
View ArticleUnread echocardiogram fallout at Harlem Hospital Center
Recently, the New York Times reported that Harlem Hospital Center had finally completed its investigation into thousands of echocardiograms that after receiving an initial reading by a technician had...
View ArticleWhy a marketing study for Niaspan was published in a medical journal
The authors call it “an in-office linguistic study” and write that it “was conducted to assess physician–patient discussions of mixed dyslipidemia.” But it’s really an Abbott marketing study for...
View ArticleAvandia aftermath: winners and losers
Responses to the Avandia panel have been all over the map, as cleverly noted on the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog. Avandia is “dead” (Forbes), or, perhaps worse, “now a Zombie” (BNET). By contrast,...
View ArticleSuspicious withdrawal of a publication from an academic journal
The official ESC journal Europace publishes an online case report by Dr. Martin Hudec about the extremely rare and spectacular failure of a recently implanted Biotronik 340 VR-T ICD in a 46-year-old...
View ArticleDabigatran (Pradaxa) questions in atrial fibrillation
The approval of dabigatran (Pradaxa) has been long awaited in the cardiology community. Although just about everyone agrees that a good alternative to warfarin is highly desirable, there are many...
View ArticleHow academic physicians are being used as live bait for journalists
Here’s something little known outside of the small circle of industry marketers, academic docs, PR flacks, and medical journalists: pharmaceutical and device companies (or their PR agencies) regularly...
View ArticleThe official response to Mark Midei is not satisfactory
For more than a year now, as most CardioBrief readers undoubtedly know, a scandal in Maryland has raised troubling questions about hundreds of stent patients treated by Mark Midei — previously...
View ArticleThe worst abuse of an embargo this medical journalist has ever seen
In general I support embargoes in medical journalism. Although the current system is far from perfect and contains all sorts of wrinkles and unexpected consequences, I support the system because it...
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