NEW ORLEANSAs the feds and payors focus on curbing readmission rates, hospitals and caregivers need to revisit management of the hospital-to-home transition. Philips Healthcare shared a new multi-vendor, multi-disciplinary model during the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

NEW ORLEANSFor CABG surgery, radial arteries are associated with reduced rates of functional and complete graft occlusion, as well as less graft disease, than saphenous veins, according to the five-year results of the RAPS late-breaking clinical trial, presented April 4 at the 60th annual American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific sessions.

NEW ORLEANS--For those with a suspected ST-elevation MI (STEMI), calling an ambulance as opposed to arriving at the hospital by other means, can fast-track access to care. Also, patients who have an electrocardiogram (ECG) in the ambulance en-route to the hospital receive first-line care in half the time, yet nearly half of patients elect not to take an ambulance and among those who do, many do not get an ECG, according to data from the ACTIVATE-SF registry presented April 2 at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific sessions.

The pediatric cardiology group at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., and the heart and vascular program at Baystate Health System in Springfield, Mass., are using the lifeIMAGE image exchange platform to share patients' cardiac and echocardiography imaging records.

The prevalence of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in young athletes is relatively low. The most common cause of SCD in this population is congenital cardiovascular disease, with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy being the most common cause. The American Heart Association calls for screening with physical history and exam, but others, notably in Europe, include a 12-lead ECG to the screening paradigm.

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) of a young athlete represents the first manifestation of cardiac disease in up to 80 percent of young athletes who remain asymptomatic before sudden cardiac arrest occurs, which explains the limited power of screening modalities based solely on history and physical exam, according to a paper in the April issue of European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention & Rehabilitation.

After a review of nearly a dozen studies of self-referred imaging by nonradiologists, the authors of a study published in the April issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology concluded that self-referral invariably leads to higher utilizationmeaning that if policymakers wish to cut the volume and costs of diagnostic imaging, closing the loophole of the Stark Law needs to be top priority.

Scheduling staff for the cardiac cath lab can cause headaches for administrators, especially for time-sensitive, off-hour emergencies. Three facilities explain their methodologies for alleviating this common practice management concern.