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
Our patient exemplified the challenges involved in a CTO, which included the length of the lesion, the lack of a proximal nipple, the presence of a side branch at the occlusion point, poor visualization of the distal vessel despite contralateral injection
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
Finnish Medical Society Duodecim. Unstable angina pectoris. In: EBM Guidelines. Evidence-Based Medicine [CD-ROM]. Helsinki, Finland: Duodecim Medical Publications Ltd.; 2006 Mar 15 [Various]
In the Injury Theory, it's damage to the arterial endothelium, followed by platelet activation, then smooth muscle cell migration to injury, then macrophages, with resulting "foam cells." Engorged foam cells burst, starting the injury cycle all over again
it may no longer be enough to measure just HDL levels without determining levels of paroxonase and platelet-activating acetylhydrolase; levels of these enzymes may determine whether HDL is proinflammatory or protective. Likewise, measuring Lp(a) and small
Overweight men and women assigned to drink fructose-sweetened beverages as 25% of their energy intake developed atherogenic lipid profiles in just two weeks; unlike glucose, fructose promotedatherogenic lioproprotein phenotypes and glucose intolerance/ins
Elevated levels of myeloperoxidase in otherwise healthy men and women increased the likelihood of overt coronary artery disease by 50% over 8 years compared with patients who had the lowest levels of the enzyme (P<0.001), according to a 2007 report publis
Two Swiss meta-analyses have found an increased rate of myocardial infarction and death with the Cypher (sirolimus-eluting) coronary stent, which is likely to put a serious chill in interventional cardiology's infatuation with drug-coated devices