Feature Channels: Cardiovascular Health

• share
• favorite_border

Just one cup of blueberries per day could be the key to reducing blood pressure and arterial stiffness, both of which are associated with cardiovascular disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Was Beethoven's music influenced by a cardiac arrhythmia?

• share
• favorite_border

A simple technique may be most effective in preventing heart disease after radiation therapy for breast cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, researchers have found that, in addition to gene mutations, environmental stress plays a key role in the development of the heart disease hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of biomedical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that for one important channel in the heart, the membrane voltage not only causes the channel to open, but also determines the properties of the electrical signals.

• share
• favorite_border

It’s a sound that saves. A “real-time” radiation monitor that alerts by beeping in response to radiation exposure during cardiac-catheterization procedures significantly reduces the amount of exposure that medical workers receive, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center have developed the first animal model with inherited cardiac arrhythmia -- an advance that could lead to better understanding of the biological mechanisms of normal heart conduction and rhythm.

• share
• favorite_border

A faster, coordinated emergency response in collaboration with hospital cardiac catheterization laboratories in each U.S. region, including New York City, is associated with improving patient survival from a heart attack caused by a sudden, completely blocked artery called an ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI), according to a study presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014.

• share
• favorite_border

More than 2,000 experts in the field of cardiovascular medicine will attend the annual American College of Cardiology 47th New York Cardiovascular Symposium December 12-14 at the New York Hilton-Midtown, which will highlight “The Next Big Things” in cardiovascular medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Patients suffering from the world's most common heart rhythm disorder can have their long-term outcomes significantly improved with an aggressive management of their underlying cardiac risk factors, according to University of Adelaide researchers.

• share
• favorite_border

Recent findings have punctured some long-held beliefs about hypertension, its triggers and effects, and the best ways to treat it.

• share
• favorite_border

NIH-funded study demonstrates thyroid hormone replacement therapy reduced atrial fibrillation in rats. The study follows previously published research from NYIT scientists on connections between thyroid hormones and cardiac health.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the Cardiovascular Institute of New Jersey at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School have found evidence that Hurricane Sandy, commonly referred to as a superstorm, had a significant effect on cardiovascular events, including myocardial infarction (heart attack) and stroke, in the high-impact areas of New Jersey two weeks following the 2012 storm.

• share
• favorite_border

Promoting healthy gut microbiota, the bacteria that live in the intestine, can help treat or prevent metabolic syndrome, a combination of risk factors that increases a person’s risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke, according to researchers at Georgia State University and Cornell University. Their findings are published in the journal Gastroenterology.

• share
• favorite_border

Using an ultrasensitive blood test to detect the presence of a protein that heralds heart muscle injury, researchers from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have found that obese people without overt heart disease experience silent cardiac damage that fuels their risk for heart failure down the road.

• share
• favorite_border

Delivering stem cell factor directly into damaged heart muscle after a heart attack may help repair and regenerate injured tissue.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from CHOP presented findings on pediatric heart disease: 3-D prototype printing of heart anatomy, the use of AEDs in infants, long-term cardiac risk in Fontan survivors, and whether cardiac cath volumes correlate with better outcomes.

• share
• favorite_border

Women who take a common type of medication to control their blood pressure are not at increased risk of developing breast cancer due to the drug, according to new study by researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Murray, Utah.

• share
• favorite_border

Women who take a common type of medication to control their blood pressure are not at increased risk of developing breast cancer due to the drug, according to new study by researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Murray, Utah.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Michigan research presented at American Heart Association meeting

• share
• favorite_border

A national effort to shave minutes off emergency heart attack treatment time has increased the chance that each patient will survive. But yet the survival rate for all patients put together hasn’t budged. It seems like a paradox. But the paradox vanishes with more detailed analysis of exactly who has been getting this treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

The investigational drug Losartan, which worked better in an animal model, was equally effective to a high dose of the beta blocker, atenolol in treating Marfan syndrome, a rare genetic disease.

• share
• favorite_border

The addition of mitral valve (MV) repair (a valve of the heart) to coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), a type of open-heart surgery, did not result in significant benefit to the patient and was associated with increased risk of neurological events. Therefore, the routine addition of MV repair to CABG in patients with moderate IMR did not demonstrate a clinically meaningful advantage.

• share
• favorite_border

An investigational treatment for Marfan syndrome is as effective as the standard therapy at slowing enlargement of the aorta, the large artery of the heart that delivers blood to the body, new research shows. The findings indicate a second treatment option for Marfan patients, who are at high risk of sudden death from tears in the aorta.

• share
• favorite_border

In October, ProMedica Toledo Hospital performed the nation’s first patient implant in the Medtronic, Inc. PERIGON (PERIcardial SurGical AOrtic Valve ReplacemeNt) Pivotal Trial. This global, prospective clinical trial evaluates an investigational surgical aortic heart valve made from bovine pericardial (cow heart) tissue that is intended to replace a diseased, damaged or malfunctioning native or prosthetic aortic valve.

• share
• favorite_border

An important new study of men who have undergone testosterone replacement therapy has found that taking supplemental testosterone does not increase their risk of experiencing a major adverse cardiac event, such as a heart attack or stroke.

• share
• favorite_border

Groundbreaking research from UT Southwestern Medical Center shows that cholesterol efflux capacity (cholesterol efflux) appears to be a superior indicator of cardiovascular risk and a better target for therapeutic treatments than standard measurements of

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have found that injections of cardiac stem cells might help reverse heart damage caused by Duchenne muscular dystrophy, potentially resulting in a longer life expectancy for patients with the chronic muscle-wasting disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Results of a new study challenge the current consensus in cardiology that peak myocardial edema, or heart muscle swelling, only occurs just after a myocardial infarction, or heart attack.

• share
• favorite_border

The layer of fat that surrounds the heart may be a better predictor of atrial fibrillation than body mass index, the most common measure of obesity, a study has found.

• share
• favorite_border

Asthma that requires daily medication is associated with a significantly higher risk of heart attack or stroke, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH).

• share
• favorite_border

lack patients who have been diagnosed with heart failure are no less likely than white patients to get atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia), according to a new study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which was presented today at the 2014 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association. These findings run counter to previous studies, which have found that black patients with heart failure tend to have less atrial fibrillation problems than white patients.

• share
• favorite_border

Emergency rooms are testing many patients for markers of acute coronary syndrome who show no signs of having suffered a heart attack, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

• share
• favorite_border

Routine heart imaging screenings for people with diabetes at high risk to experience a cardiac event, but who have no symptoms of heart disease, does not help them avoid heart attacks, hospitalization for unstable angina or cardiac death, according to a major new study.

• share
• favorite_border

Yasuo Ikeda, M.D., of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues examined whether once-daily, low-dose aspirin would reduce the total number of cardiovascular (CV) events (death from CV causes, nonfatal heart attack or stroke) compared with no aspirin in Japanese patients 60 years or older with hypertension, diabetes, or poor cholesterol or triglyceride levels.

• share
• favorite_border

Joseph B. Muhlestein, M.D., of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, Murray, Utah, and colleagues examined whether screening patients with diabetes deemed to be at high cardiac risk with coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) would result in a significant long­term reduction in death, heart attack, or hospitalization for unstable angina.

• share
• favorite_border

Fatigue, increased irritability, and feeling demoralized, may raise a healthy man or woman’s risk of first-time cardiovascular disease by 36 percent, according to a study led by researchers at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai Roosevelt hospitals presented on Nov. 17 at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2014 in Chicago, IL.

• share
• favorite_border

Mikhail Kosiborod, M.D., of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute, Kansas City, and colleagues evaluated the efficacy and safety of the drug zirconium cyclosilicate in patients with hyperkalemia (higher than normal potassium levels). The study appears in JAMA and is being released to coincide with its presentation at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2014.

• share
• favorite_border

Results from the DAPT Study were announced in November in multiple presentations at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014. Results from the primary study analysis were concurrently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and an investigator-led meta-analysis was published in The Lancet.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study by University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers confirms their surprising earlier finding: Patients who suffer a STEMI heart attack while while in the hospital for something else are more likely to die than patients who have the same type of heart attack outside the hospital.

• share
• favorite_border

Duk-Woo Park, M.D., of the University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, and Manesh R. Patel, M.D., of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, N.C., and colleagues investigated the incidence, extent, and location of obstructive non-infarct-related artery (IRA) disease and compared 30-day mortality according to the presence of non-IRA disease in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction.

• share
• favorite_border

Lars H. Lund, M.D., Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether beta-blockers are associated with reduced mortality in heart failure patients with preserved ejection fraction (a measure of how well the left ventricle of the heart pumps with each contraction).The study appears in the November 19 issue of JAMA, a cardiovascular disease theme issue.

• share
• favorite_border

Vivek Y. Reddy, M.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and colleagues examined the long-term efficacy and safety, compared to warfarin, of a device to achieve left atrial appendage closure in patients with atrial fibrillation. The study appears in the November 19 issue of JAMA, a cardiovascular disease theme issue.

• share
• favorite_border

Prashant Kaul, M.D., of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and colleagues conducted a study to define the incidence and treatment and outcomes of patients who experience a certain type of heart attack during hospitalization for conditions other than acute coronary syndromes. The study appears in the November 19 issue of JAMA, a cardiovascular disease theme issue.

• share
• favorite_border

A blocked artery causes a deadly kind of heart attack known as STEMI, and a rapid response to clear the blockage saves lives. But in more than half of cases studied recently by Duke Medicine researchers, one or both of the patient’s other arteries were also obstructed, raising questions about whether and when additional procedures might be undertaken.

• share
• favorite_border

Members of the public in counties with higher median household incomes are more likely to step into action to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, when they witness someone have a cardiac arrest, according to a new study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which was presented today at the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Science Symposium 2014.

• share
• favorite_border

Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil®), especially at the higher standard dose of 400 mg per day, independently decreases the risk of cardiovascular morbidity in people with rheumatoid arthritis, according to new research findings presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in Boston.

• share
• favorite_border

As the holidays approach, it’s easy to slip into bad eating habits. However, poor diet increases the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and poor circulation – three major factors that affect overall heart health. In the November issue of Food Technology magazine published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), Contributing Editor Linda Milo Ohr writes that adding certain nutrients and foods to the diet that may decrease risk for heart disease, which is the number one cause of death in the United States.

• share
• favorite_border

A surgical team at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre led by internationally-acclaimed cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Vivek Rao, has successfully implanted a novel mechanical device, the HeartMate IIITM, into a patient with advanced heart failure.