This is very big news.
Today the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI), the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association (ACCA) and the Working Group (WG) on Thrombosis of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) published their joint consensus document on the radial approach to PCI, online ahead of print in EuroIntervention. Continue reading
Jennifer Tremmel, MD
Letters…we get letters.
Last month Dr. Oz did a segment on transradial angioplasty and featured Dr. Jennifer Tremmel who is not only the Clinical Director of Women’s Heart Health at Stanford Clinic, but also the Director of Transradial Interventions at Stanford Medical Center. I reported on that show here.
There was much buzz generated in the cardiology community; after all, it’s not every day that many millions of viewers hear about an interventional cardiology procedure that’s practiced in less than 10% of cases. Continue reading
Filed under Interviews, Patient Experience, Patients, Transradial Approach
Check out the first post of 2013 on our new blog. “The Activated Patient.” It’s titled “Singing On The Table: Be Activated in 2013 with a Non-Resolution” and it’s all about what it means to be “activated” — not just for heart patients, but for the rest of us as well.
As we’ve written in the past couple of months, this whole area of patient empowerment is becoming increasingly important as the issues of shared decision-making, patient preference and patient-centered therapy have been highlighted in recently published guidelines from all the major heart organizations.
As for what “singing on the table” means, you’ll just have to read the post….
Cleveland Clinic
A new article about transradial angioplasty (the placement of a stent using the radial artery in the wrist) appeared today in the Cleveland Clinic’s Heart & Vascular Health Blog, authored by their “Beating Edge Team.” Titled, “Unclogging Blocked Arteries Via the Wrist: Angioplasty approach may offer clinical benefits for certain patients,” the article’s purpose seems to be to familiarize patients with this new alternative approach to diagnostic angiography and angioplasty, “now being offered” at the Cleveland Clinic.
Unfortunately this short article, while supposedly an “advertisement” for wrist angioplasty, continues to promulgate several widely-held myths about the radial approach. Continue reading
Partnering with informed patients is a central tenant of the newly released joint 2012 Guidelines For Diagnosis and Management of Patients with Stable Ischemic Disease, as well as SCAI’s consensus update on Ad-Hoc PCI. And new studies about angioplasty and stents are being presented regularly that call for shared decision-making: for example, the OVER study, showing that endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms with stent grafts is equivalent to open surgery, the FREEDOM study discussing the options for multivessel disease in diabetic patients, and FAME 2 for the treatment of stable heart disease with significant ischemia as measured by fractional flow reserve. Patient preference comes into play in all of these. Continue reading
Findings in a report issued last week by the Blue Shield of California Foundation demonstrate that an informed patient is an empowered patient: one who feels more comfortable asking questions of one’s healthcare provider, and making decisions about one’s own healthcare.
While this equation may seem obvious, the report puts numbers to the equation, marking the significant differences between the informed and uninformed patient. Most importantly, the patient population studied consisted of low income families with annual household incomes less than 200% of the federal poverty level, or about $46,000 for a family of four. Continue reading
Filed under History, Patient Empowerment, Patient Experience, Patients, Shared Decision-Making
Patient exchange in cath lab at Kihara Cardiovascular Hospital in Japan
Earlier today I reported on an important study, published online first in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. The study fed the results from 14 radial vs. femoral trials (RIVAL et al) into the cost-benefit analysis machine at Penn Medicine’s Center for Evidence-based Practice (CEP).
And the results? The transradial wrist approach to catheter-based procedures (angiograms, stents, etc.) was less expensive ($275 per procedure) and resulted in two-thirds less complications than the femoral/groin approach. Continue reading
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