The year in Cardiology 2014 — a top-10 list

When the editors at Medscape asked me to put together an essay on the Top 10 stories in cardiology in 2014, I thought it would be an easy project. I was wrong. It turns out there was a lot to say about the happenings in cardiology this year.  In the end, the final essay had 37 references–a bunch for a blogger. The link to the piece is at the end of this post. What follows is a regular-language breakdown of the ten topics. The first five deal with specifics; the second five touch on trends. Here we go: 1. Renal denervation is the medical name given to a procedure in which a doctor uses a catheter to ablate (burn) nerves in the kidneys. I realize that sounds dubious, nerves are there for a reason, but the procedure had promised to cure high blood pressure. (Grin.) But then reality struck. A properly done clinical trial showed the procedure did not work. Drinking beetroot juice looked better. This was a big story not just because it surprised experts, but also because it exposed the danger of basing medical therapy on flawed science. (See points 8 and 10.) 2. Congestive heart failure is the name we use when the heart fails to pump enough nutrients to the body. One of the many causes of CHF is a weak heart muscle–which we call systolic dysfunction. There hasn’t been a new drug released for systolic heart failure in more than two decades. This year, the PARADIGM-HF study showed that CHF patients treated with a new class of drugs, called angiotensin-neprilysin...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs