CardioBrief

I recently posted the following thread on Twitter: I am so disappointed by the large number of pre-pandemic medical skeptics who have now turned into mask/vaccine skeptics. I largely agreed with ...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2021/09/06/skeptics-and-the-pandemic/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=skeptics-and-the-pandemic

I was surprised to learn from a recent press release that the American College of Cardiology is planning to have some live participants at its annual scientific sessions meeting in May. The colle...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2021/01/25/should-the-acc-have-a-live-meeting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=should-the-acc-have-a-live-meeting

Fake news didn’t just become a problem because of Trump, or the pandemic. It’s been around for a long while. The problem can’t begin to be solved unless the medical and scientific community...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/12/10/the-defense-of-science-in-the-age-of-fake-news/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-defense-of-science-in-the-age-of-fake-news

At this moment in time the pre-pandemic cardiology research agenda needs to be completely reprioritized. There are two broad areas that now take precedence over all existing research concerns. On...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/10/29/cardiology-research-business-as-usual-during-the-pandemic/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cardiology-research-business-as-usual-during-the-pandemic

Early in the pandemic there was a widespread belief that science would be our salvation. With the help of science we would be spared the worst consequences, such as occurred during the 1918 Spani...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/09/16/the-decline-of-science-in-the-pandemic/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-decline-of-science-in-the-pandemic

We still don’t know what COVID-19 is doing to the heart or how we should be investigating it and treating it. Last month JAMA Cardiology published a German cohort study of 100 patients recently...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/08/24/a-covid-19-cardiac-mri-study-what-went-wrong/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-covid-19-cardiac-mri-study-what-went-wrong

It is often said that medicine is both an art and a science. In an imperfect world this is both inevitable and desirable. But it is extremely important that the two should not be confused with ea...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/08/20/dont-confuse-the-art-and-science-of-medicine-pci-vs-cabg-for-left-main-disease/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dont-confuse-the-art-and-science-of-medicine-pci-vs-cabg-for-left-main-disease

Note to readers: After a period of inactivity CardioBrief is coming back, but with some big differences. This website, CardioBrief.Org, will remain my personal website. A new website, CVCTCardio...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/07/17/news-about-cardiobrief-and-cvctcardiobrief/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news-about-cardiobrief-and-cvctcardiobrief

No, CRISPR gene editing technology is not going to “cure” heart disease. But a New York Times story by Gina Kolata on an extremely early study in animals prominently plays up just this e...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2020/06/30/no-crispr-is-not-going-to-cure-heart-disease/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=no-crispr-is-not-going-to-cure-heart-disease

Do we ever learn from our past mistakes? For many years we believed that technology was an inevitable force for good. It would give us instant access to a near infinite amount of information and ...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2019/11/13/what-can-we-learn-from-the-apple-heart-study/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-can-we-learn-from-the-apple-heart-study

This morning STAT published an Op-Ed piece I wrote about the Apple Watch. Here’s how it starts: Set your smartwatch alarm. You’re about to be barraged by tons of hype about the health benefi...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2019/03/15/health-hype-alert-beware-the-apple-watch/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=health-hype-alert-beware-the-apple-watch

Note: This is a slightly revised version of a talk I delivered at the recent CVCT Conference in Washington, DC.  Why are we vulnerable to fake news and why is it so hard to get rid of it? This i...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/12/22/the-simple-truth-about-fake-medical-news/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-simple-truth-about-fake-medical-news

It hasn’t received a lot of media attention but on Tuesday the FDA approved an expansion of the canagliflozin (Invokana, Janssen) label to include a reduction in the risk of heart attack, strok...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/10/31/questions-raised-about-invokana-label-expansion-for-cv-risk-reduction/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=questions-raised-about-invokana-label-expansion-for-cv-risk-reduction

(Updated) The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) has denied press credentials for the TCT2018 meeting to a legitimate, fully accredited journalist. The meeting, which starts this weekend in...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/09/19/cardiovascular-research-foundations-blocks-press-access-to-tct2018-meeting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cardiovascular-research-foundations-blocks-press-access-to-tct2018-meeting

The US is not perfect but until recently it has always moved, inexorably, if slowly and fitfully, in the general direction of justice and greatness. The best and undeniable example of this in rec...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/09/06/right-wing-minority-rule/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=right-wing-minority-rule

Editor’s note: 86-year-old Nina Mishkin was still healthy and active when she went to Dublin, Ireland last September. After she returned home she developed atrial fibrillation, and then much mo...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/08/30/what-happens-when-a-healthy-86-year-old-gets-atrial-fibrillation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-happens-when-a-healthy-86-year-old-gets-atrial-fibrillation

A new paper from a very large ongoing observational study offers additional and more powerful evidence that dramatic reductions in salt consumption may not be beneficial and might even prove harm...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/08/09/lancet-paper-adds-to-evidence-that-reducing-salt-to-very-low-levels-may-be-dangerous/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lancet-paper-adds-to-evidence-that-reducing-salt-to-very-low-levels-may-be-dangerous

It’s “breakthrough” time again. News reports out of the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) this week have been relentlessly upbeat and positive about findings from t...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/07/26/no-a-big-nih-trial-did-not-show-that-lowering-blood-pressure-will-prevent-dementia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=no-a-big-nih-trial-did-not-show-that-lowering-blood-pressure-will-prevent-dementia

Pirates are attacking interventional cardiology meetings. Interventional cardiologists planning to attend the upcoming TCT meeting should be aware that at least one pirate web site is out to dupe...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/07/24/warning-pirate-sites-are-now-kidnapping-doctors-booking-hotels-at-medical-meetings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=warning-pirate-sites-are-now-kidnapping-doctors-booking-hotels-at-medical-meetings

If you look hard to find people who have atrial fibrillation (AF) you will in fact find people who have atrial fibrillation, a new paper published in JAMA shows. But the paper offers no evidenc...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/07/10/if-you-look-for-atrial-fibrillation-you-will-find-atrial-fibrillation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-you-look-for-atrial-fibrillation-you-will-find-atrial-fibrillation

Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Khurram Nassir, a cardiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the senior author of a new paper in JAMA Cardiology, “Association...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/07/04/1-in-4-cardiovascular-patients-in-low-income-families-have-significant-financial-pain/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1-in-4-cardiovascular-patients-in-low-income-families-have-significant-financial-pain

Everyone knows that cannibalism was practiced widely in pre-Colombian Mexico. Go online and you will quickly learn that 15,000 to 20,000 Aztecs were sacrificed each year. This “fact” colors o...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/06/21/on-cannibals-and-cardiologists/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-cannibals-and-cardiologists

Editor’s note: the following article is reprinted with permission from Kaiser Health News. Links to previous CardioBrief coverage of the laboratory scandal story can be found at the bottom of t...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/06/04/outsiders-swoop-in-vowing-to-rescue-rural-hospitals-short-on-hope-and-money/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=outsiders-swoop-in-vowing-to-rescue-rural-hospitals-short-on-hope-and-money

New data presented at EuroPCR from the much debated ORBITA trial may provide some modest temporary lessening of the pain felt by interventional cardiologists in response to the initial negative O...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/05/22/new-orbita-findings-may-offer-modest-symptomatic-pain-relief-to-interventional-cardiologists/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-orbita-findings-may-offer-modest-symptomatic-pain-relief-to-interventional-cardiologists

The NHLBI has put an early stop to the large Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction (CIRT) Trial. The NHLBI action was based on a recommendation from the trial’s Data and Safety Monitoring Boar...

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/05/21/nih-halts-large-cardiovascular-inflammation-reduction-cirt-trial/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nih-halts-large-cardiovascular-inflammation-reduction-cirt-trial