Interventional Cardiology

This cardiac subspecialty uses minimally invasive, catheter-based technologies in a cath lab to diagnose and treat coronary artery disease (CAD). The main focus in on percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) to revascularize patients with CAD that is causing blockages resulting in ischemia or myocardial infarction. PCI mainly consists of angioplasty and implanting stents. Interventional cardiology has greatly expanded in scope over recent years to include a number of transcatheter structural heart interventions.

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Nursing Team Plays Key Role in Patient Success for Cardiogenic Shock

Offered in cooperation with Abiomed

Teamwork, technology and a can-do attitude come together at a rural community hospital in the Southwest, where an Impella program for cardiogenic shock patients has saved many lives in past years.

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Are Powerful Tools Reshaping Decision-making in the Cath Lab?

How will the debate over when to use FFR, IVUS and OCT play out?

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Do-Better or Do-Over? Cath Lab Safety May Be Ready for a Reboot

Instead of improving fluoroscopy, should interventional cardiologists and radiologists be focusing on change?

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Structured Reporting: The Cardiologist’s View on the Value of Quality Data Collection

McKesson

After pushing for years to build a unified cardiology database powered by structured reporting, several members of the heart team at 237-bed Providence St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont., finally got their moment around six years ago.

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Signing Bonus: How Shared Decision Making Improves Informed Consent

SCAI considers the limitations of informed consent and how shared decision making could help.

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Gait speed helps predict mortality after cardiac surgery

A prospective cohort study found that gait speed was an independent predictor of adverse outcomes among older adults who underwent cardiac surgery. For each 0.1 m/s decrease in 5-m gait speed, there was an 11 percent relative increase in operative mortality.

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AATS.16: TAVR is superior to surgery in lowering mortality among high risk patients

Patients with aortic stenosis who were at high surgical risk had better outcomes if they underwent transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) than if they had surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR), according to an analysis of a randomized trial.

AATS.16: Cardiothoracic surgeons will see a major caseload increases

By 2035, cardiothoracic surgeons will be responsible for more than 850,000 patients, a 61 percent increased caseload overall and a 121 percent increase for each surgeon, according to a database analysis.

Around the web

Several key trends were evident at the Radiological Society of North America 2024 meeting, including new CT and MR technology and evolving adoption of artificial intelligence.

Ron Blankstein, MD, professor of radiology, Harvard Medical School, explains the use of artificial intelligence to detect heart disease in non-cardiac CT exams.