How can social media improve AF patient and provider interaction? It was an honor to speak at the seventh annual Western AF symposium this past weekend in Park City Utah. Once in the shadow of the Boston AF symposium, Dr. Nassir Marrouche (@nmarrouche) and his colleagues at the University of Utah have elevated Western AF […]
Here are 13 things I tell AF patients. I am sorry that you have AF. Welcome to the club, there are many members. (Three million Americans and counting.) I know how it feels. Your fatigue, shortness of breath and uneasiness in the chest are most likely related to your AF. AF may pass without treatment. […]
(What follows is a brief introduction for a post I wrote over at Medscape/Cardiology. The link is at the bottom of the page.) It is appropriate to worry about medical errors and patient safety. Here the low-hanging fruit is plentiful: antibiotic stewardship, automated notification of drug interactions and attention to hand washing all join a […]
Atrial fibrillation is a mysterious disease. We know a lot but surely not enough. We look at AF but are we really seeing it? I believe there are hard truths to this disease. Hard in a way that neither patients nor doctors like. More on that later. First to some news on a major AF […]
The Choosing Wisely campaign began in 2009 when the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation invited medical societies to own their role as “stewards of finite healthcare resources.” The movement aims to promote care that is supported by evidence, not duplicative, free from harm and truly necessary. That sounds delightful, and I wrote enthusiastically […]
Elisabeth Rosenthal, a reporter with the New York Times, is doing American doctors a favor. Her series, Paying Till it Hurts, is forcing us to face our role in the US healthcare problem. That’s a good thing, because, as it goes in the practice of Medicine, the first step to achieving good outcomes is identifying […]
President Obama has a few good ideas. He wants Americans to discuss healthcare this holiday season. That’s actually a really good idea. This blog aims to do some good in the area of medicine and health. What follows are two incredibly important essays. The consolation prize is an excerpt from my recent Top Ten post. […]
When the editors of Medscape asked me to write a Top Ten article on the best Cardiology stories in 2013, I jumped at the chance. I spent a lot of time thinking about Cardiology this year. I was invested. Plus, 2013 was a year for pivoting–big time pivoting. What made news in 2013 was not […]
For the prevention of stroke in atrial fibrillation, the novel anticoagulant drugs dabigatran (Pradaxa, Boehringer Ingelheim), rivaroxaban (Xarelto, Bayer Pharma/Janssen Pharmaceuticals), apixaban (Eliquis, Pfizer/Bristol-Myers Squibb), and edoxaban (Lixiana, Daiichi-Sankyo) have been sold as both superior and more convenient than warfarin. But is this true? More than 60,000 patients have been enrolled in randomized controlled clinical […]
I made a discovery this week about the novel anticoagulant medications, dabigatran (Pradaxa), rivaroxaban (Xarelto), apixaban (Eliquis) and edoxaban (Lixiana). I was looking into the often-asked question of how these new drugs compare to the old standard, warfarin. The discovery felt like a Eureka moment. I ran it by my stats guy–my son–and a couple […]
Just a few weeks before the 2013 American Heart Association Sessions, Shelley Wood, the managing news editor of theheart.org emailed to ask if I was up for going to the meeting. With trips to San Francisco, Denver, Athens and Amsterdam already in the books this year, I had counted 2013 as a win. I was […]
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