A group of young cardiologists in New York City is opening hybrid health clinics, which combine the in-person guidance of physicians with the latest in digital health technology and screening tools.

The average U.S. cardiologist’s salary dropped by 4 percent last year, to $559,568, MedAxiom reported in its annual Cardiovascular Provider Compensation & Production Survey. The dip follows three consecutive years of salary hikes that reached an all-time high in 2016.

“The people most in need of it, those who might benefit from tests and distance monitoring, are the least likely to get (the Apple Watch),” Aaron E. Carroll, MD, wrote in the New York Times. “If we truly believed this was a medical test beneficial to the general population, insurance should pay for it."

The long-held belief that sudden cardiac arrests (SCAs) occur most commonly on weekday mornings has been debunked by a team in Portland, Oregon, whose recent study of more than 1,500 SCA victims failed to identify any peak windows during which heart patients were prone to sudden cardiac death.

Asymptomatic patients with severe aortic stenosis are at greater risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality if they have higher peak aortic jet velocities or left ventricular ejection fractions (LVEFs) below 60 percent, researchers reported Oct. 3 in JAMA Cardiology.

The considerable survival advantage observed in female patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) during the procedure’s earlier years has diminished in the contemporary TAVI era, according to research out of Petah Tikva, Israel, meaning men and women are seeing similar outcomes post-procedure.

Lorcaserin, an appetite suppressant approved for chronic weight management in 2012, reduced overweight patients’ risk for developing type 2 diabetes (T2D) and improved remission of hyperglycemia in a study of more than 12,000 Massachusetts residents, researchers reported.

Three days’ worth of home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM) data is enough to confirm a diagnosis of clinical hypertension and initiate treatment, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

With CMS set to release a new National Coverage Determination (NCD) for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) next June, researchers at TCT 2018 weighed in on what the new procedural volume thresholds should look like.