Category Archives: ACC

Status of the “Disappearing Stent” in Europe: It’s Complicated!

Last night news began circulating on Twitter that Abbott’s Absorb BVS (Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold) was being withdrawn from the European market. This information was prompted by several physicians posting on Twitter a March 31 “Urgent Field Safety Notice/Physician Advisory” letter from Abbott addressed to “Valued Abbott Vascular Customer.”

A number of news sources, including this one, posted articles and tweets to the effect that the Absorb was being taken off the commercial markets and, as the letter stated, “Effective May 31, 2017, the device will only be available in clinical register setting at select sites/institutions that will play a pivotal role in the monitoring of this technology until Summer 2018 at which time the situation will be reviewed.”

This morning Abbott reacted to this initial flurry of reports that they had “pulled the Absorb” with some clarification: specifically that the Absorb is NOT being pulled from the market and still retains the CE Mark. An Abbott spokesperson told Angioplasty.Org, “Absorb will continue to be commercially available in Europe through the registries.”

But the relationship, as they say on Facebook, is complicated.

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Filed under ACC, Antiplatelet Medications, Bioresorbable Stents/Scaffolds, Business & Industry, Clinical Trials / Studies, Europe, Stent, Stent Thrombosis

Interventional Cardiology Late-Breakers at ACC.17

Washington Convention Center

Over the next three days, a voluminous amount of data will be presented, shared, and debated among an estimated 18,000 attendees of the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, this year held in Washington, DC.

While the meeting covers the whole spectrum of cardiology and heart-related issues, there are a number of studies and late breaking clinical trials specific to the subspecialty of interventional cardiology. Continue reading

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Filed under ACC, Bioresorbable Stents/Scaffolds, Clinical Trials / Studies, FAME I / FAME II, FFR, Heart Attack, iFR, Intravascular Guidance, Meetings & Conferences

Happy 100th Anniversary to the RSNA

Mason Sones in a Philips cath lab of the 50's

Mason Sones in a Philips cath lab of the 50’s

This week the Radiological Society of North America, a.k.a. RSNA, is holding its annual meeting in Chicago. RSNA is an international society of radiologists, medical physicists and other medical professionals with more than 54,000 members from 136 countries across the globe. And this year the 55,000 attendees in Chicago are celebrating something special: the 100th anniversary of the RSNA.

To help honor the work of the Society, Angioplasty.Org would like to offer the video below which details the impact that imaging had on our field: the treatment of coronary artery disease. Continue reading

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Filed under ACC, Angiograms, History, Imaging, Innovators, Meetings & Conferences, Video

Frontiers in Cardiology – One Day Course in New Jersey

MMC_Course_2015_140sq If you’re a cardiologist, Fellow, or in the allied health fields, and you weren’t able to make it to London for the five-day-long European Congress of Cardiology meeting, you can get a quick dose of the latest and greatest in a single day on Saturday, September 19, in Short Hills, New Jersey.

Titled “Frontiers in Cardiology,” this symposium is presented by the Morristown Medical Center, part of the Atlantic Health System, and features a stellar international faculty, including Maurice Buchbinder, Roxana Mehran, James Udelson, Nanette Wenger, and more. A range of contemporary topics are on the agenda, from atrial fibrilation to coronary artery disease, imaging and heart disease in women. Continue reading

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Filed under ACC, Medical Education, Meetings & Conferences

Who’s Sorry Now? The ABIM, That’s Who

sorry_140sqThe lyrics of the 1923 song go like this: “Who’s sorry now, who’s sorry now? / Whose heart is achin’ for breakin’ each vow?”

And today, it was the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) who said they were sorry for breaking the hearts of all the cardiologists in the U.S. of A.

They wrote specifically: “We got it wrong and sincerely apologize. We are sorry.Continue reading

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Filed under ACC, Media Coverage, Medical Education, SCAI

NBPAS Launches Alternative to MOC

   Today’s the day that The National Board of Physicians and Surgeons (NBPAS) officially launches. Briefly stated, it’s an alternative certification organization, set up by Dr. Paul Teirstein and a group of physicians, mostly cardiologists, who strongly objected to the Maintenance of Certification assessment track established by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

You can read more about it in my post from last week, “Scalpel…Suture…Suction…Pencil?” and in Dr. Teirstein’s New England Journal of Medicine article, titled “Boarded to Death — Why Maintenance of Certification Is Bad for Doctors and Patients.

I’ll be following the progress of this initiative, but a few recent articles and developments bring up some interesting points. Continue reading

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Filed under ACC, Medical Education, Meetings & Conferences

Scalpel…Suture…Suction…Pencil?

  The buzz going around the medical community this week is Dr. Paul Teirstein’s article in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, titled “Boarded to Death — Why Maintenance of Certification Is Bad for Doctors and Patients,” in which he skewers the imposition of the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) requirement put into place a year ago by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

The concept of the MOC was to ensure that physicians who had been certified in their specialty kept current with medical practice and the current guidelines. It’s not that concept that Dr. Teirstein objects to, but its heavy-handed implementation by, as he puts it, “people not directly involved in patient care who have lost contact with the realities of day-to-day clinical practice.” Ouch!

And Dr. Teirstein is not alone in his objections. An online petition he created has garnered almost 20,000 signatures. It asks the ABIM to recall the changes in MOC and institute a simple pathway consisting of  a recertification test every ten years; a corollary petition, pledging non-compliance (read “boycott”) has over 6,000 signers – a more difficult pledge since many physicians are employed by hospital systems that require the ABIM MOC. And this certification is a monopoly, but more on that later…. Continue reading

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Filed under ACC, Medical Education, Meetings & Conferences, SCAI, Web Site