Important challenge to dogma alert: You may have heard that high cholesterol leads to heart disease. Most experts accept the important role that cholesterol plays in heart disease: High cholesterol, particularly LDL (the bad kind), favors build up of plaque, which then leads to obstructed arteries and heart attack. It’s simple. It makes sense. Even […]
Year: 2012
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A doctor’s review of The Book Thief…
There’s one more notable thing that happened while I was in Boston. Be forewarned, it’s a little self-congratulatory: I read a book. A story. And I feel the better for it. So much so, that I am moved to say something. The story made me feel, think, wonder, and yes, sometimes gulp hard. Like doctors […]
Whew. The Boston AF symposium digests slowly. Processing nearly the entirety of AF into just three days borders on ridiculous. Well at least for us regular guys, you know, those of us that doctor, not model things mathematically. This year, I tried something new: posting slightly refined quick notes on each lecture, mostly in real-time. […]
Today is the third and final day of the Boston AF symposium. (My editorial comments in italics.) Dr Hugh Caulkins started the day by reviewing the major clinical trials of AF ablation. A lot of these I have written about previously. One of the most pivotal trials to mention is CABANA. Here, investigators are enrolling […]
The late-morning sessions addressed the possible mechanism(s) of AF. Many ask what causes AF. The assumption holds that if we can ablate AF, we must know what causes it. This would not be true. One line of thinking holds that disorganized electrical conduction throughout the atria plays an important role–not just focal drivers and initiators […]
Dr. Frank Marchlinski moderated the first sessions: The global topic involved pulmonary vein reconnections. This is the bane of AF ablation. Our inability to broach the 80% success rates has most to do with the fact that PVs don’t stay isolated. Everyone wants to enhance the durability of PV isolation. Nassir Marrouche spoke about what […]
The second half of the day was fast paced and full of information. Folks, these are rough notes. Hope they help…Again my random thoughts are in italics. Dr Eric Prystowsky led off the with the best clinical papers of 2011: He is a great speaker and hit upon a bunch of important topics. The good […]
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Live Blog–Boston AF symposium
I’ve never tried this before: giving some brief snips of an AF symposium, on the fly. Maybe doing so will help me remember. My comments are in italics. Little proofreads–consider these quick notes. First talk: Dr Jalife. Molecular mechanisms AF: Think fibrosis, or the infiltration of scar tissue within the muscle of the heart. This […]
Do you own a car? A TV? If so, you may be at risk of a heart attack? Or at least so says this most recent study of many thousands of patients, across 52 countries. (You can breathe now; they didn’t look at the risk of iProducts.) The INTERHEART study, published this week in the […]
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To Boston…
This week will be AF week. I am flying to Boston for the renowned Boston AF symposium, Thursday-Sunday. On Wednesday, I’ll be visiting a Harvard hospital to watch a case of cryo-balloon ablation for AF. It will be the second time that I have seen the cryo-balloon, the first was in May 2011 in Hamburg. […]
It has been awhile since I wrote about catheter ablation of Atrial fibrillation (AF). It’s time. Things have changed—for the better. But you wouldn’t have guessed this if all you read were recent headlines. Medpage Today says AF ablation is dogged by complications. TheHeart.org calls complications after AF ablation not uncommon. These stories summarize the […]