A simple blood test done immediately after cardiac surgery may provide an effective indication of a patient’s postoperative stroke risk. An acutely elevated blood urea nitrogen (BUN) level after an operation was “by far” the most powerful predictor of postcardiac surgical stroke in a case-control study.

The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions’ (SCAI) 2015 convention will kick off May 6 with a session on state-of-the-art technologies, which will include keynote lectures by Christian Assad-Kottner, MD, of El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif., and Peter J. Fitzgerald, MD, of Stanford University in California.

Acknowledging there was room for improvement, the authors of PCI appropriate use criteria (AUC) have applied lessons from the last set of guidelines in a revision scheduled for publication this year, a member of the writing committee said.

The FDA is warning cardiologists that patients can develop life-threatening symptomatic bradycardia when the hepatitis C drugs ledipasvir/sofosbuvir or sofosbuvir combined with another direct-acting antiviral are taken together with amiodarone.

Multidisciplinary teams offer a broader scope of clinical opinions that can change the face of healthcare. In the case of physician-pharmacist teams, blood pressure control at nine months was best among patients monitored by a team, with sustained improvement through 24 months among minorities.

It's been nearly a decade since Gheorghe Sandru received the heart implant that changed his life.

For symptomatic intracranial stenosis, aggressive medical therapy appears the best choice. Again. According to the findings from VISSIT, patients receiving intracranial stents were more than twice as likely to have a stroke, transient ischemic attack, intracranial hemorrhage or die within the first 30 days.

Experts in transcatheter valve replacement offered guidelines for treating pediatric and adult pulmonic valve patients, including the development of multidisciplinary heart care teams to let patients understand the gamut of options from a variety of experienced specialists.