CARDIOPROGRESS
Foundation for the advancement of cardiology

Obama Proposes Third Year of Medicaid-Medicare Pay Parity Robert Lowes President Barack Obama yesterday released a budget for fiscal 2015 that delighted champions of primary care, even as Congressional Republicans called the overall dollar figures "unserious" and "irresponsible."

CABG Reduces Risk of Death vs PCI in Diabetic Patients Michael O’Riordan TORONTO, ON — Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is superior to PCI for reducing the risk of all-cause mortality in diabetic patients with multivessel disease, according to the results of a new meta-analysis.

Happy Hearts: Positivity Plus Exercise Linked to Lower CVD Mortality TILBURG, THE NETHERLANDS — The association between a positive emotional state of mind and lower mortality in patients with ischemic heart disease is mediated by exercise, according to the results of a new study.

Statins Linked to Cataracts in Large, Retrospective Study Shelley Wood SAN ANTONIO TX — Another large study is linking statin use to the development of cataracts. The latest, following on a Canadian analysis last year, is a propensity score-matched analysis of over 45 000 subjects in a military healthcare system, published this week in JAMA Ophthalmology.

Editorial Claims Bad Rap for Saturated Fat, Disputes Dietary Dogma LONDON, UK — The contention that dietary saturated fats aren’t the bad guys that policies and guidelines have portrayed for decades has reemerged in the literature, this time in an "Observations" opinion piece in published in BMJ

Bacterial Toxin May Trigger Multiple Sclerosis Researchers have identified a bacterial toxin that they believe may be a trigger for multiple sclerosis (MS). Their study, published in the October issue of PLoS ONE, is the first to identify the culprit bacterium, Clostridium perfringens type B, in humans, and to single out the toxin it produces — known as epsilon toxin — as a probable MS trigger.

High Dietary Acid Load May Increase Diabetes Risk Janis C. Kelly Women with a high dietary acid load — typically associated with eating lots of protein but few vegetables — had a 56% higher risk for type 2 diabetes than women in the lowest quartile for dietary acid load, in a new analysis of the Étude epidémiologique auprès des femmes de la Mutuelle Générale de l"Education Nationale — European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (E3N-EPIC) study.

CMS Tool Tells Docs Whether Medicare Will Penalize Them Robert Lowes Medicare incentive programs have physicians sometimes feeling as if they are rolling down a rocky hillside inside a 50-gallon steel drum: Will they get hit with a penalty for not electronically prescribing? Or not using an electronic health record (EHR) system in a meaningful way? Or not reporting how they perform on measures of high-quality care?

Novel Prion Disease With Peripheral Symptoms Identified Sue Hughes Researchers from the United Kingdom have identified a new clinical syndrome caused by a novel genetic prion disease that causes severe diarrhea and peripheral neuropathies.

Nut Consumption Linked to Lower Mortality Laurie Barclay, MD The frequency of nut consumption was inversely associated with total and cause-specific mortality independent of other predictors of death, according to a study from 2 large prospective US cohorts, published in the November 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

US News Ranks Top Cardiology, Heart Surgery Hospitals Cleveland Clinic in Ohio is once again the number-one hospital for cardiology and heart surgery, according to US News & World Report latest rankings. In the magazine's 2023-2024 list, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, takes over the number-two spot from Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, which drops to No. 3. Cedars-Sinai held the number-three spot on last year's rankings.

Career paths for cardiologists in industry: pharmaceutical, medical insurance, health technology and management consulting Cardiologists have opportunities to transition to different roles outside of traditional clinical care. In this article, we describe the potential opportunities for cardiologists in pharmaceutical, medical insurance, health technology and management consulting. We highlight some unique considerations for each industry and discuss a strategic approach to engage in these opportunities.

HIGHER COFFEE INTAKE TIED TO LOWER MORTALITY RISK Higher coffee intake is linked to significantly lower risk for death, two large studies confirm. The benefit was found in diverse European populations, as well as across different racial/ethnic groups, researchers report in articles published online today in Annals of Internal Medicine. Because coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the United States and worldwide, the public health effect of coffee intake could be substantial, even if the effect on an individual is small. Despite mounting evidence for the health and mortality benefits of coffee consumption, the relationship between coffee intake and mortality in different European populations in which coffee preparation methods vary has been unclear. Similarly, data on coffee drinking among nonwhite populations were lacking.

FOCUSED ISSUE ON ADVANCES IN CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE PREVENTION: INTERVIEW WITH PROF. NATHAN D. WONG AND PROV. IAN GRAHAM A very focused issue on “Advances in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention” has been published in Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy(CDT). It was our honor to invite its Guest-editors Prof. Nathan D. Wong and Prof. Ian Graham for an E-interview. Prof. Nathan Wong is a cardiovascular epidemiologist and Professor and Director, Heart Disease Prevention Program, Division of Cardiology at the University of California, Irvine in California. He holds MPH and PhD degrees in epidemiology from YaleUniversity. He is a past president (2010–2012) of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. He is also a fellow of the AmericanCollege of Cardiology, American Heart Association, National Lipid Association, and American Society for Preventive Cardiology and is the current treasurer of the Pacific Lipid Association, and is on the board of directors of the InterAmerican Heart Federation and California Chapter of the AmericanCollege of Cardiology. He also serves on the Member Services and Credentialing Committee and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease Committee of the AmericanCollege of Cardiology and is past chair of the American Heart Association Prevention Science Subcommittee.

INFLAMATION MAY EXPLAIN MORTALITY-RISK LINK TO TV WATCHING Prolonged television viewing is associated with an increased mortality risk, including from cardiovascular disease (CVD), that may be at least partially mediated by inflammatory markers, suggest results from a large UK cohort study[1]. The findings, which were published online on June 9, 2017 inAtherosclerosis, demonstrate for the first time that over 15% of the association between mortality and increased TV viewing may be explained by C-reactive protein and fibrinogen levels. Dr Mark Hamer (National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine, East Midlands, Loughborough, UK) and colleagues note that previous research has shown that prolonged sitting is linked to the expression of genes associated with inflammatory responses. "Fibrinogen, the strongest predictor of mortality in the present study, may also have relevance in terms of elevated risk of vascular conditions, particularly venous thrombosis," they write. "Recent experimental data demonstrated increases in plasma fibrinogen with prolonged uninterrupted sitting that was attenuated with active breaks." While the researchers note that the study design does not allow the temporal relationship between TV viewing and the biomarkers to be determined, previous analyses of the same cohort revealed a prospective association between TV viewing and changes in inflammatory markers.

THE GENDER GAP IN CARDIOLOGY IS EMBARRASSING Since women make up about half of all medical students, the glaring gender gap in cardiology deserves attention. Dr Robert Harrington of Stanford called the dearth of women in cardiology a talent issue for our field. In a tweet, he noted that women make up 45% to 47% of internal medicine residents but less than 20% of cardiology fellows. And it"s worse in the lab-based subspecialties, where <10% of interventional cardiology or electrophysiology fellows are women.

Professor David Wood, WHF President, on participating in the 70th World Health Assembly Today marks the opening of the 70th World Health Assembly (WHA), one of the highlights of the global health calendar. At this annual conference, Ministers of Health, civil society and World Health Organization (WHO) experts will meet to discuss the most pressing health issues of our time, including cardiovascular disease (CVD). As President of the World Heart Federation, I am delighted to welcome a large delegation of member partners, members, Board and staff to the event. Through our leading position in cardiovascular health, we aim to raise the profile of CVD to ensure that global health policies meet the needs of patients and our global membership.

Genetic Risk Could Guide Heart Disease Prevention The use of genetic sequencing to identify which patients would benefit most from aggressive statin therapy for the primary prevention of a heart attack could soon be a clinical reality. And the discovery of genetic mutations associated with cardiovascular disease — but not linked to any known risk factors — opens the possibility of novel therapies to help people cut the risk for future events. "Among those at high genetic risk, statins confer a greater benefit for primary prevention of coronary heart disease," said Sekar Kathiresan, MD, from Massachusetts GeneralHospital in Boston and the Broad Institute in Cambridge.

On behalf of Cardioprogress Foundation let us sincerely congratulate you with the World Heart Day! On behalf of Cardioprogress Foundation let us sincerely congratulate you with the World Heart Day! World Heart Day is celebrated annually starting from 1999, more than in 100 countries around the globe in the last Sunday of September. And in 2011, the World Heart Day. And from 2011 it has its own confirmed date- the 29th of September. Events, that take place during the World Heart Day are attract attention to the problem of cardiovascular diseases, it"s the world"s biggest intervention against these conditions. It’s utterly important to show the world the importance of healthy life style, and the influence of bad habits on the cardiovascular system.

Trump Pick for CMS Would Ease Up on Physicians Seema Verma, MPH, President Donald Trump"s choice to head the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has mixed feelings about electronic health record (EHR) systems. It"s just one example of how she"s on the same page with many physicians regarding healthcare. "My doctor…is staring at her computer instead of looking at me," the healthcare policy consultant told the US Senate Committee on Finance during her confirmation hearing yesterday. Verma"s comment came in response to a question about the future of the CMS incentive program for meaningful use of EHRs, much criticized by physicians for turning them into data entry clerks. She also recounted seeing signs in physician waiting rooms that apologized for schedule delays due to EHR implementation. Yet another tech challenge she cited was the lack of EHR interoperability, which prevents different programs from freely exchanging data.