Categories
Cardiac Stem Cells Cycling Stuff General Cardiology General Medicine Health Care Health Care Reform ICD/Pacemaker inflammation Knowledge

Right Care Action Week — rational care

I wrote yesterday about how a broken healthcare system favors overuse of procedures. Today I will discuss rational care. Remember the goals of the Lown Institute: We think healthcare should be affordable, effective, rational and available to all. Rational means in accordance with reason or logic. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see […]

Categories
Cardiac Stem Cells

Integrity of acid-bath stem cell paper questioned — possible retraction

Oh folks. I am sorry about this. Six weeks ago, I published this guest post from Michael Zhang, an MD-PhD candidate at the University of Louisville, on what I felt were two pioneering papers in biology. Michael did a great job reviewing and explaining the papers, which described a simple method of reprogramming mature mammalian […]

Categories
Cardiac Stem Cells

A Super Week in Biology: This could change everything about the practice of Medicine.

Editor’s note: What follows is a guest post. Michael Zhang is an MD-PhD student studying at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He is one of my go-to experts on matters of cell biology and stem cells. (His bio is below.) As you may have heard, this week brought striking news in the field […]

Categories
AF ablation Atrial fibrillation Cardiac Stem Cells General Cardiology General Medicine

Notes from ACC — Day 2

Those of you who run or ride know what the second day back after a break feels like. The first day is awesome. The body is fresh and snappy; there is an adrenaline rush at the start. It’s easy to overcook it on Day 1. Then there is me at the ACC on day 2. […]

Categories
Cardiac Stem Cells

If the human heart was like that of a newt…

…it would be a good thing! There are oodles of old rules in Cardiology. The provocateur in me loves it when dogma falls. Niftier even, is when one can invoke the biology of newts to explain how yet another certainty was proven wrong. As it turns out, those funny-looking mud-lovers possess a property that may […]