After years of go-slow adoption and cautious optimism, European cardiologists are now embracing remote monitoring of cardiac electrophysiology devices. ‘We are at the dawn of a new era,’ concluded Dr Philippe Ritter, Chairman of the Cardiostim 2010 congress, after reviewing findings of studies that delivered unequivocal evidence that remote monitoring is not only a safe alternative to clinic…
Drug-eluting stents to treat narrowed coronary vessels met with sensational success, and then things became rather quiet. Now, two new developments from Cordis and Biotronik are being tested at Essen University Hospital, Germany. We asked Professor Holger Eggebrecht, head of the hospital’s cardiac catheter lab, why these new models look important.
Ongoing technical developments in computed tomography (CT) such as dual source CT have established coronary CT angiography (cCTA) as a robust non-invasive imaging test for the assessment of coronary artery disease. The most important advantage of cCTA over conventional catheter-based coronary angiography is that not only the coronary lumen but also the entire coronary artery wall is visualized…
The focus on Coronary artery disease – from genes to outcomes at ESC 2010 underlines the importance of CAD diagnosis on the scientific agenda. During the session ‘Multi modality imaging to detect coronary artery disease’, chaired by Professor JJ Bax, of the Cardiology Department at Leiden University Medical Centre, the Netherlands, experts will discuss, for example, the advantages of the…
When in 1992 Dr Luigi Marzio Biasucci, head of the Sub-intensive Care Unit at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, Italy, published with his team the first paper on C-reactive protein (CRP) in unstable angina, few people believed in the diagnostic power of biochemical features to measure the effects or progress of disease, illness, or a condition. Today, biomarker tests are part…
Patients with heart failure with normal ejection fraction (HFNEF) also referred to as ‘stiff heart’, show a normal ejection fraction and severe diastolic dysfunction. President of the Austrian Society of Cardiology, Professor Irene Lang warns: ‘It is particularly concerning that stiff heart is a little known and insufficiently researched cardiac condition -- a stepchild in research,…
Five days at ESC 2010, the world’s biggest international cardiology meeting -- with the Spotlight 2010 strongly focused on "Coronary Artery Disease: From Genes To Outcomes", but yes, so much more, too. This year’s programme is based on 4167 abstracts selected from more than 9,500 submissions, as well as over 120 Hotline and Clinical Trial Update presentations. From these, 35 Hotline sessions…
A team led by UK-based researchers has found that having diabetes doubles the risk of developing a wide range of blood vessel diseases, including heart attacks and different types of stroke. The consortium, headed by Dr Nadeem Sarwar and Professor John Danesh of the University of Cambridge, analysed data from the individual records on 700,000 people, each of whom was monitored for about a decade…
The daily management of diabetes mellitus is a complex interaction between blood glucose measuring, lifestyle aspects and drug therapy. Large epidemiological trials such as UKPDS (United Kingdom Diabetes Prospective Study) have shown that an optimal blood glucose adjustment has beneficial long-term effects on type-2 diabetics’ risk of micro- and macrovascular secondary complications.
The landmark achievements in interventional cardiology that are rapidly advancing minimally invasive surgeries (MIS) on a beating heart were demonstrated during a Paris course on revascularisation (EuroPCR), the annual meeting of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI).
Renewing Health is the Veneto Region’s response to the third Call of Proposals by the European Information Communication Technology Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP). The project, which falls under the ICT-PSP financing plans, aims to facilitate the use of ICT-based solutions and services for citizens, the government, and businesses, as well as aiding their diffusion throughout Europe.
The teaching hospital in Olomouc aims to become a national centre for telemedicine. A telemedicine system is currently used by the hospital’s Internal Medicine Department 1 for cardiac patients and almost a hundred patients are remotely monitored via a telesystem implemented by the hospital.
If patients suffering acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia are admitted to hospitals that frequently treat these illnesses they are less likely to die, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
At 12 months the NEVO Sirolimus-eluting Coronary Stent has continued to demonstrate excellent safety and efficacy outcomes compared to Taxus Liberte according to new data presented today from the NEVO RES-I clinical trial. These results were presented as a late breaking trial at EuroPCR, the leading medical conference in Europe for physicians specializing in interventional cardiovascular…
Although cardiac computed tomography (cCT) has shown very good diagnostic accuracy for the detection of coronary artery disease, the physiologic significance of many lesions can be uncertain. Furthermore, the presence of calcified atherosclerotic plaque reduces the ability to differentiate significant stenosis from non obstructive plaque.
Hot topics to be covered during the EuroPCR Forum sessions are the challenging implementation of the best standard of care for STEMI patients throughout Europe (with the timely use of stents), the introduction of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) in clinical practice and the challenges related to bifurcation treatment options.
The cardiovascular community gathers in Paris May 25th-28th for EuroPCR. EuroPCR is the leading course in interventional cardiology. It is also the official congress of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI). More than 12,000 participants will learn about the latest developments in the field and engage in discussions and constructive debate about the best…
Cancer Research UK has joined forces with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Diabetes UK to launch a new campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of carrying excess weight around the waist. A survey to launch the 'Active Fat' campaign found that 71 per cent of respondents admitted to carrying excess weight around their middle.
New drugs that are helping fight a multi-front war on cancer may do the same for cardiovascular disease, Medical College of Georgia researchers said. Cancer and cardiovascular disease, both among top U.S. killers, share inflammation as a cause. Heat shock protein 90 inhibitors as a treatment could become additional common ground, said Dr. John Catravas, director of MCG's Vascular Biology Center.
Though heart disease is a major cause of disability and death, very little is understood about its genetic underpinnings. Recently, an international team of investigators at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) and other organizations shed new light on the subject. Studying Drosophila…
Cardiologists are looking beyond on-screen images of the heart to extract data behind these scans that describe coronary dysfunctions and can reveal hard evidence of the cause of disease reports John Brosky.
While lower intelligence scores have been associated with a raised risk of cardiovascular disease, no study has so far compared the relative strength of this association with other established risk factors such as obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Now, a large study has found that lower intelligence scores were associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease and total mortality at…
Bypass or stent? In Germany alone, every year 370.000 patients have to decide which kind of surgery they will undergo. The Syntax study (Synergy between PCI with taxus and cardiac surgery), presented in September, looked at 1.720 patients and aims to provide help to answer this crucial question.
The idea of publishing a Textbook of Cardiovascular Imaging which accumulates the expertise of European cardiovascular imagers, is long awaited. The new textbook by the European Society of Cardiology is written with a patient rather than technology-based approach, helping clinicians to explain the condition to the patient, with the aid of imaging.
Using a new noninvasive imaging technique, scientists said they have discovered important, fundamental differences in heart motion by age and gender. Their study - reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, a journal of the American Heart Association - is the first to provide gender- and age-specific data on the motions of the normal heart based on a regional analysis of myocardial…