I have become an AF-doctor. That means my most exciting aspect of medicine is terminating AF with watts delivered through a catheter. “Got it.” In that beautiful moment, the take-the-fun-out-of-medicine people seem far away. Huge grin! Though all that high-tech stuff is exhilarating, it’s fair to say that the most remarkable thing in AF medicine […]
Enjoy. It’s only 2:17. My eighth-grade son, “you know, it raises some interesting issues…though I don’t think Cancer would disappear.” JMM h/t @Andrea_Cyr
When I started writing this blog 18 months ago, I did so on a whim. I enjoyed posting race reports on our bike team’s e-group. Writing in race-report vernacular, to an e-group of friends, made me laugh. There was zero pressure. Then, I learned about this thing called blogger. They had a ‘publish’ button, which […]
Oops. I screwed up. This week’s Cycling Wednesday entry didn’t get posted last night. As we used to say in fellowship training, it was a “rookie mistake.” An example of an electrophysiologist getting too fancy with WordPress–a failure to use the KISS method. Sorry. Here’s the entry: After spending an entire vacation reading stories, I […]
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Plugged back in
Hello there, all. It’s been a while. Whoa, that was a vacation. I’ve decided to type frivolously tonight. The main purpose in doing so is just to get started writing something. Anything. I’m afraid the malaise of vacation is lingering. I’m afraid that it might stick. Please don’t look for me to give a heavy […]
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Vacation…
For the next few days I will be unplugged.  On vacation, sans Apple products. At the same time, there will be oodles of heart-related news coming out of the American College of Cardiology meetings in New Orleans. My friends, Larry Husten (@cardiobrief) at Cardiobrief, and Doctor Wes Fisher (@doctorwes) will surely provide great coverage on their […]
Almost everything about the new blood-thinning drug, dabigatran (Pradaxa) is novel. In February, I wrote about the drug’s unusually short (thirty-day) expiration time. This week, the FDA has released a new communication concerning dabigatran. It included practical safety tips for patients, pharmacists and doctors, and is nicely summarized by Larry Husten, on Cardiobrief. Here are […]
For competitive cyclists, Sunday morning usually signifies a time for combining spirituality with calorie-burning. Whether we are immersed in the total focus of a hotly-contested bike race or meditating our way through a seemingly endless training ride, it’s a given that most cyclists use Sundays to churn out the kilo-joules. This kind of Sunday-behavior differs […]
There are few other medical specialties that boast more guidelines than Cardiology. We don’t say a specific treatment plan was good or bad; we say it was “I, IIa, IIb, or III” Today, a well publicized health story (WSJ, and NY Times) from the Archives of Internal Medicine reported that more than 50 percent of […]
Whenever someone asks about the cost of an ICD (Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator), an image pops into my brain. The image that I see is how the ICD gets handed to me during the implant surgery. Imagine: Careful. Cautious. Consider how you would pass your new brand new iPad 2 to a friend, then multiply that […]
On the way out of the hospital yesterday, after an incredibly productive week, I tweeted that catheter ablation was a team sport, and that our team was rocking it. They were; they do all the time. This response was tweeted back: …”A team sport? Ahhhh, not sure I would want to hear those words as […]