Cardiac MR (CMR) can help guide therapy in patients with recurrent pericarditis. One center reported patients who underwent imaging received a smaller total dose of steroids and experienced fewer recurrences than patients who did not get scans.

It may sound counterintuitive, but healthcare costs could be reduced by including weekend hours in the cardiac catheterization lab, according to a study published in the March issue of the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Cardiac MR’s ability to detect ablation scarring may help guide redo procedures, but perhaps not just yet.

Some patients may have greater risk of DNA damage due to radiation exposure from SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging, even though the radiation dose is low, according to a study published Jan. 21 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.

Operators who pull an all-nighter in the cath lab don’t appear to put the patients they treat the next day at risk, according to one study. The likelihood of bleeding complications increased under the care of chronically sleep-deprived physicians, though.

Use of short-term, high-dose atorvastatin may help patients avoid contrast-induced kidney injury, according to a meta-analysis published in the February issue of The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

An automated ultrasound device for imaging peripheral arteries may provide a way to identify people with subclinical atherosclerotic plaque in populations not well served by risk-factor tools, according to a study published Jan. 12 in Global Heart.

Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) may shed some light on lesions that cause ischemia, based on a study that compared atherosclerotic plaque characteristics by CCTA with lesion-specific ischemia by fractional flow reserve.