Has ACVP solved a critical issue facing European medical conferences?

Posted on by Sean McElgunn

Thanks to the recent adoption of a new code of ethical conduct by MedTech Europe, a group of industry associations doing business in Europe, the future of European cardiology conferences may soon be in jeopardy.

The reason? More barriers to attendance.

It’s not that these conferences suffer from a lack of interested medical professionals. It’s just that, while many MDs would very much like to attend, registering for a cardiology conference in Europe is not cheap—on the order of thousands of dollars per event.

Everybody, the attendees, the presenters, with the exception of a very limited number of senior professors, has to pay, and it is understood that the physicians will attend more than a few over the course of a year.

And, in the time honored tradition of using off-site attractions as a lure for good registration numbers, the meetings are held in “not cheap” locations across the Continent, further ballooning the cost of attendance.

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Is heart failure over-diagnosed? and other stories

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Is heart failure over-diagnosed?

A common problem in elderly men, obstructive uropathy, can look a lot like heart failure.

When pulmonary edema is present, heart failure is often the "scapegoat" says Melissa Walton-Shirley, MD in a commentary on Medscape. Approaching heart failure with "an air of skepticism" might help.

I've seen a handful of obstructive uropathy cases masquerading as heart failure in elderly men in recent years. I shudder to think how many times I've missed it. I suspect that it's not just men who suffer. Some of our female patients with "diastolic dysfunction" and overflow incontinence seem to suffer from backpressure that finds its way into the pulmonary vasculature.

Melissa Walton-Shirley, MD
Read more on Medscape.

NYU Langone tests new transcatheter device.

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Mitral Valve Repair: “An Opportunity for Quality Improvement”

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Even in low-volume VA centers, mitral valve repair outcomes best replacement.

A large multi-center study presented at the 96th American Association for Thoracic Surgery Annual Meeting followed trends in mitral valve (MV) surgeries in the Veterans Administration Health System from 2001-2013 and provided further evidence to support the use of mitral valve repair over mitral valve replacement in patients with degenerative MV disease.

"MVRepair has a greater short-term protective effect against mortality than MVReplace has in patients with primary degenerative MR," write the authors. "Despite this survival advantage, the rate of MVRepair is low at some centers; therefore, there is clearly an opportunity for quality improvement."

Beyond a survival advantage, mitral valve repair was also found to result in fewer complications and shorter hospital stays.

Is that success dependent on volume? Not necessarily.

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New Cardiac Imaging Technique Produces Higher Quality Images in Less Time

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

CMR

An innovation in cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging eliminates the need to correct images for respiratory motion, producing higher quality, more accurate images without waiting for patients to breathe.

Preliminary research presented at EuroCMR 2016 by Professor Juerg Schwitter, director of the Cardiac MR Centre at the University Hospital Lausanne, Switzerland, demonstrated how using a modified ventilator and small volumes of air, called "percussions," eliminated the need for patients to breathe during CMR.

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