One Minute, Shared Decision-Making Aid Reduces Unnecessary Hospitalization

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Additional cardiac imaging often unnecessary

Last week, Mayo Clinic researchers showed that using a shared decision-making aid to involve more patients in care decisions can prevent both unnecessary hospitalization and more advanced cardiac tests for patients with low-risk chest pain.

The "Chest Pain Choice" shared decision-making aid is one of the latest evidence-based practices built on high-sensitivity troponin rule-out of acute coronary syndrome for ED patients reporting acute chest pain. After the one-hour test, an additional "one minute" discussion to educate patients about their risk and reach a shared decision can prevent further unnecessary and costly testing.

ACVP Blog has discussed decision-making for acute chest pain before, suggesting that the fact the cardiac biomarker test can safely and accurately rule-out acute coronary syndrome within one hour "challenges [the] need" for commonly-used noninvasive imaging prior to patient discharge.

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Study finds risky drug interaction between two common statins and anti-clotting drug for stroke

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

If simvastatin or lovastatin are combined with dabigatran—brand name Pradaxa, an anti-clotting drug—hemorrhage risk increases.

A study published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that within a cohort of almost 46,000 patients treated with dabigatran, the use of simvastatin or lovastatin, relative to other statins, increased the risk of a major hemorrhage by approximately 42 percent.*

Administrative data supported the authors' hypothesis that these two commonly-prescribed, cholesterol-lowering statins would "increase the amount of dabigatran absorbed by the body," reads the St. Michael's Hospital press release, "something other statins would not be expected to do." A higher concentration of dabigatran, in turn, would result in higher bleeding risk.

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Cardiac cath team gets a new member. Defining a new sub-specialty: interventional echocardiography

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Structural heart procedures are growing, and so is the cath lab team.

For two straight years, Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology (DAIC) magazine has reported from the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) Annual Scientific Sessions on the rise of a new sub-specialty—interventional echocardiography.

Interventional echocardiography crucial to structural heart

Structural heart procedures have seen rapid growth in the cath lab—and have been a featured topic at many of our 2016 regional educational conferences—and for all but the most expert interventionalists, echocardiography plays a big role in those cases.

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Cath innovation: Cardioband repairs first leaky tricuspid

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Valtech Cardio's Cardioband system brings direct annuloplasty to the field of percutaneous coronary intervention—for catheter-based mitral valve repair and now, tricuspid valve repair.

A team from the University Hospital Zurich led by Francesco Maisano, MD recently succeeded in the first ever minimally invasive procedure using Cardioband to repair a leaky tricuspid valve, according to yesterday's press release from the University of Zurich.

The news comes shortly after Valtech shared follow-up data from a multi-center Cardioband Mitral study at the PCR London Valves 2016 conference. Results showed a "significant and consistent reduction in MR" with a "safety profile similar to equivalent transcatheter procedures" according to the session slides.

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