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 […]
Category: General Ablation
On the way home from the American College of Cardiology meeting this spring, I wrote a post about the lack of real progress in Cardiology. I got to thinking: Here I was attending major meetings all over the world, and few, if any, studies struck me as game-changers. Everything seemed so painfully incremental. So many […]
There were many good questions raised on my last post. Thanks. One particularly relevant theme concerned the relationship of atrial fibrillation (AF) and coronary artery disease (CAD). There’s a great deal of misunderstanding out there on how these two common disease relate to each other. I thought a few paragraphs might be useful. On the […]
On the way out of the hospital yesterday, after an incredibly productive week, I tweeted that catheter ablation was a team sport, and that our team was rocking it. They were; they do all the time. This response was tweeted back: …”A team sport? Ahhhh, not sure I would want to hear those words as […]
The human heart resides in a lightless 98.6-degree chest cavity. Its contracting muscles are further cushioned by the well-lubricated glistening smooth pericardial sac. One wouldn’t think that the heart could sense the time of year. The heart’s rhythm should remain independent of the holiday season. But then there is December in the EP lab. They are […]
Sometimes it is easy. The problem is in front of you and the solution is clear and defined. Sometimes though, the solution requires a journey–an odyssey, with a faithful companion. The experienced clinician knows this but the new patient does not. Recently, I found myself in a stressful situation; stressful for many reasons, not the […]
Many of my athletic colleagues have shared their arrhythmia stories, both publicly and privately. The volume of these correspondences have surprised me. It is clear from reading many of these stories, that a few points of clarification are needed. I was furhter inspired to write more on the athlete conundrum after reading this Facebook status […]
I walked out of the hospital with heavy shoulders and my head held low. It was many years ago as a younger doctor. An arrhythmia arose from a difficult area to navigate to, and in trying hard to ablate this area, a terrible complication ensued. The rest of the day was spent dealing with this […]
Freezing the heart is in the news. Â The STOP-AF trial was presented at ACC, and it sure has generated much excitement about atrial fibrillation ablation. Â This is a good thing. However, as is the norm in the era of instantaneous news, the press reports read much differently than reality. The propaganda has an effect. I […]
Atrial fibrillation therapy continues to grow in complexity. Â Thus far, an easy cure has remained elusive. Â The potential of discovering an easy cure of AF –and the resultant immense profits –has provided fertile soil for medical device companies. Â But, like in a garden, fertile soil provides for the growth of both beautiful plants and weeds. […]
Some very sad words from the comments section of a previous post on atrial fibrillation… Anonymous said, Is there anyone out there that has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and was told to have an ablation? Any problems??? My husband of 45years and I believed that his cardio doctor would not put him in harms way by […]