ACC and AHA Release 10 “Comprehensive” Measures to Combat Sudden Cardiac Death

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

A new joint report released today by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) offers practitioners and stakeholders ten evidence-based quality and performance measures to prevent sudden cardiac death (SCD).

"This is the first comprehensive measure set in the area of SCD prevention," says Sana Al-Khatib, MD, co-chair of the report writing committee in an ACC press release. "Our vision is that these measures will be developed, tested and implemented in clinical practice and that implementation will improve patient care and outcomes."

Sudden cardiac death a "healthcare crisis"

The American Heart Association reports more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) occurring in 2016 with only 12 percent of people surviving to hospital discharge. These approximate statistics suggest more than 308,000 sudden cardiac deaths per year.

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One Minute, Shared Decision-Making Aid Reduces Unnecessary Hospitalization

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Additional cardiac imaging often unnecessary

Last week, Mayo Clinic researchers showed that using a shared decision-making aid to involve more patients in care decisions can prevent both unnecessary hospitalization and more advanced cardiac tests for patients with low-risk chest pain.

The "Chest Pain Choice" shared decision-making aid is one of the latest evidence-based practices built on high-sensitivity troponin rule-out of acute coronary syndrome for ED patients reporting acute chest pain. After the one-hour test, an additional "one minute" discussion to educate patients about their risk and reach a shared decision can prevent further unnecessary and costly testing.

ACVP Blog has discussed decision-making for acute chest pain before, suggesting that the fact the cardiac biomarker test can safely and accurately rule-out acute coronary syndrome within one hour "challenges [the] need" for commonly-used noninvasive imaging prior to patient discharge.

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Study finds risky drug interaction between two common statins and anti-clotting drug for stroke

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

If simvastatin or lovastatin are combined with dabigatran—brand name Pradaxa, an anti-clotting drug—hemorrhage risk increases.

A study published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that within a cohort of almost 46,000 patients treated with dabigatran, the use of simvastatin or lovastatin, relative to other statins, increased the risk of a major hemorrhage by approximately 42 percent.*

Administrative data supported the authors' hypothesis that these two commonly-prescribed, cholesterol-lowering statins would "increase the amount of dabigatran absorbed by the body," reads the St. Michael's Hospital press release, "something other statins would not be expected to do." A higher concentration of dabigatran, in turn, would result in higher bleeding risk.

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Cardiac cath team gets a new member. Defining a new sub-specialty: interventional echocardiography

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Structural heart procedures are growing, and so is the cath lab team.

For two straight years, Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology (DAIC) magazine has reported from the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) Annual Scientific Sessions on the rise of a new sub-specialty—interventional echocardiography.

Interventional echocardiography crucial to structural heart

Structural heart procedures have seen rapid growth in the cath lab—and have been a featured topic at many of our 2016 regional educational conferences—and for all but the most expert interventionalists, echocardiography plays a big role in those cases.

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