Categories
Doctoring Reflection Social Media/Writing/Blogging

A whimsical update on things buzzing in my head…

Hey all, I’ve hit a little tough patch in the area of writing. Simply said, it’s been difficult finding the time in recent weeks. That’s the funny thing about writing, the more I do it, the harder it gets. It takes longer now. So…In an effort to just feel better, and, because this is a […]

Categories
Doctoring ICD/Pacemaker

Cardiology and stewardship — New post up at Medscape|Cardiology

One of the definitions of the noun steward is a person whose responsibility it is to take care of something. Wikipedia calls stewardship an “ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources.” These apply well to cardiologists–who use powerful (and expensive) tools in the care of fellow humankind. The internal cardiac defibrillator, or […]

Categories
Doctoring Health Care Reform

Six initial impressions of the Medicare payment disclosure story

What a day it was for medical news. After much legal wrangling, specifically by the Wall Street Journal, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released detailed data on payments to 825,000 US physicians in 2012. It was called a “data dump.” Wow. Was it ever. The story was front page news in US […]

Categories
AF ablation Athletic heart Atrial fibrillation Dabigatran/Rivaroxaban/Apixaban General Cardiology General Medicine

New post on Medscape/Cardiology: My take of the 2014 Atrial Fibrillation treatment guidelines

Atrial fibrillation affects millions of patients, and its incidence and prevalence are on the rise. It’s a peculiar disease in that it affects people so differently. When populations are studied, AF associates with higher rates of stroke, heart failure and death. But patients aren’t populations. In recent years, the treatment options for this pesky disease […]

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Reflection

Vacation Time

Hey all, The Mandrola family Spring break this year coincided with the American College of Cardiology 2014 Scientific Sessions. We are on a college tour in California. The cardiology community is in Washington DC. If you are interested in following ACC news, I’d recommend my colleagues and friends over at theHeart.org | Medscape/Cardiology. The ACC […]

Categories
AF ablation Athletic heart Doctoring Exercise Healthy Living inflammation

New post up on Medscape/Cardiology: Ablation versus medicine as an intitial strategy for treating AF

Earlier this month I promised to put together teaching points from the Rich Peverley story. His was an interesting case of  sudden collapse that likely occurred as a result of atrial fibrillation therapy rather than atrial fibrillation itself. This was my original report: Important lessons from the collapse of NHL player Rich Peverley (BTW: It […]

Categories
AF ablation Athletic heart Atrial fibrillation

How successful is AF ablation?

Let’s talk about success. At first glance, knowing whether a medical or surgical intervention achieves success seems quite simple. An antibiotic clears an infection–or it does not. A surgery removes a tumor with clean margins–or it does not. An angioplasty and stent open an artery during a heart attack–or it does not. In the case […]

Categories
Doctoring General Cardiology General Medicine Health Care

A follow-up on the LifeVest…and decision quality

One of the most controversial posts I have ever written concerned Zoll corporation’s wearable cardiac defibrillator, which they have smartly branded the LifeVest. Here is the link to the 2013 post: LifeVest: A Precarious and Unproven Bridge . . . to Somewhere The less-than-glowing assessment brought me a great deal of criticism, both publicly and […]

Categories
Health Care Healthy Living inflammation Nutrition

Dear Girl Scouts: It’s time to cut out the cookies

It happened while I was leaving a grocery store in the southeastern United States. The young girl who asked me if I wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies was strikingly perfect. She was thin, happy, and well spoken. So were her colleagues. The moms, too, were of healthy weight and cheer. It was as if […]

Categories
Cycling Stuff Cycling Wed Reflection

Dear Motorist: We are you

The thing about people who ride bikes is… …we are people. Human beings. The life of a person on a bike depends on the humanity and compassion of motorists. Here is a poignant 4:42 second video that I hope you will watch, and then share with others. (After the video is a post I wrote […]

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 […]