The world of EP keeps getting busier and busier, and ICMs make it easier for clinicians to keep up. 

Expert-led discussions on buy-and-bill

The American College of Cardiology is offering several educational webinars and patient cases on diagnosing severe aortic stenosis in a variety of patient types. The series is called Severe Aortic Stenosis: Essentials for Assessment and Diagnosis.

Shared decision-making is absolutely crucial when diagnosing and treating heart valve disease (HVD). Should a transcatheter intervention be considered or is surgery the best choice? Would the patient respond better to an artificial or a bioprosthetic heart valve? These are just a couple of the key questions that are vital for the entire heart team—and the patient—to be involved in that discussion.

Innovation in the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) space has upped the ante once again.

For patients with peripheral arterial disease, the mainstay of initial treatment is always risk factor modification, ambulation, and compliance with guideline-based medical therapies. However, for patients who have lifestyle limiting claudication or have progressed to critical limb ischemia (CLI), intervention is warranted.

Improving access is at the center of a pair of new trends in treating peripheral artery disease (PAD). First is the office-based lab (OBL) expanding access to more PAD patients needing therapy, and the second is physicians more often choosing alternative access such as radial, tibial or pedal to treat those patients. Why now?

The patient was a 77-year old diabetic with an ulcer on her big toe. There was almost no blood flow to the foot, and she was in terrible pain. Her podiatrist had sent her to the hospital. The nurses who initially checked the foot had seen cases like this plenty of times. If the woman was lucky, the surgeon might be able to amputate the foot and save the rest of the leg below the knee.