My friend Anish Koka, a cardiologist, wrote a beautiful review of COVID testing over at the HealthCareBlog. The great pandemic is wreaking havoc, we are told, because the nation is not testing enough. The consensus from a diverse group that includes public health experts, economists, and silicon valley investors is that more testing will allow […]
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The COVID crisis has decimated water exercise. Can we rethink pool closures? A significant number of my older patients relied on pools for their fitness. During a pandemic, you can stay active or fit only if you have good legs and joints. Walkers, runners, and cyclists have no problem; they play outside in the Spring […]
Many things have changed in my life. I still practice electrophysiology full-time in Louisville. I still write. And I still love endurance exercise. You haven’t seen many blog updates because my writing has taken different forms. One is academic writing. In 2019, I co-authored 21 academic papers. Here is a link to the papers on […]
Hey Athletes: My colleague, Professor Rachel Lampert, from Yale, along with the StopAF.org patient group, seek to learn more about how atrial fibrillation (AF) and its treatments affect athletic people. If you are an athlete or if you regularly exercise vigorously, please give the Yale researchers a few moments of your time. Here is the […]
Most years I write an update on any big developments in AF ablation. This year’s version will be a short one. I have little new to report. But it’s worth reviewing some basic issues. We still do not know the cause of atrial fibrillation (AF). That makes it hard to fix with ablation. Knowledge Deficits: […]
We have to talk about drugs. No, not illicit drugs, but medications used by doctors and patients. Plaintiff attorneys run ads on TV that fool people into thinking certain meds are bad. The current one I deal with is the clot-blocking drug rivaroxaban (Xarelto.) Before that, it was dabigatran (Pradaxa). If, or when, the makers […]
Yesterday I posted the four most important questions to ask your doctor. Let’s apply those questions to a typical scenario: Whether or not to take an anticoagulant drug for prevention of stroke in the presence of AF. We need a typical patient. For this example we will pick a typical CHADS-VASC 2 patient. 65 year-old […]
I am seeing an increasing number of patients who did not know they had a choice about taking a medicine or having a procedure. Why did you have that heart cath? A: My doctor said I should. Why are you on that medicine? A: My doctor prescribed it. It’s time we re-review the basic four […]
A colleague recently asked me if atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation was overused. Yes it is. AF ablation has become the wild west of electrophysiology. There is essentially no scrutiny of this invasive, expensive and risky procedure. I also include here the add-on “maze-like†procedures done during heart surgery for other conditions. I believe they too […]
Hi all, I have graduated from blogger to author. My first book is now available. It’s called the Haywire Heart. I co-wrote it with Chris Case and Lennard Zinn. VeloPress is the publisher. The book deals with one of my favorite themes: heart conditions in endurance athletes. Although exercise is a key component of health, […]
This post is an introduction to commentary I made recently over at theHeart.org on Medscape. Gender features in the discussion, but there are lessons for men and women with AF. *** A large study from a group of Stanford researchers made three big observations on AF ablation: Women, compared with men, presented for first AF […]