The CMS announced its planned 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule this week, which includes proposals that could result in cuts ranging from 10% to more than 40% in Medicare payments for various cardiology services, says the ACC.
Smoking-cessation drugs varenicline and bupropion must carry a boxed warning in their labeling stating that use of the drugs has been associated with serious mental-health events, the US FDA has announced.
The rate of major adverse cardiac events was significantly lower among patients "reloaded" with atorvastatin 80 mg 12 hours prior to PCI and 40 mg just before the procedure than in those who did not receive the additional statin boost.
An analysis of Medicare records for over 433 000 patients who received CPR between 1992 and 2005 showed that the rate of survival to hospital discharge hovered at around 18%, in spite of efforts to improve CPR delivery.
Human cardiovascular progenitor cells isolated from human fetal hearts can give rise to striated- and smooth-muscle cells as well as endothelial cells, researchers report.
Insurance-reimbursement rules, state laws, and the public's false perceptions of survival after cardiac arrest may impede emergency medical workers from using best resuscitation attempts, a study finds.
A new meta-analysis including some of the more contemporary statin trials has found that the agents significantly improve survival and reduce coronary and cardiovascular end points in primary-prevention populations, a benefit that extends to all subgroups. But the exact cost/benefit equation for each group remains to be determined.
Screening for contemporary biomarkers, such as CRP, will not add much to conventional cardiovascular risk factors in terms of helping to predict future events in the primary-prevention setting, say the authors of a new study.
The makers of alogliptin say it will be two years before they have the cardiovascular data needed by the FDA, while the EASD raises concerns over a possible cancer risk with insulin glargine.
Music, particularly pieces that contain crescendos or gradual increases in volume, elicits synchronized cardiovascular and respiratory responses in young people, a new study finds.
New research shows that ischemic heart disease patients who suffer significant anxiety have close to a fivefold increased risk of experiencing frequent angina and those with depression have more than a threefold increased risk for these episodes.
With concerns raised about the use of prescription painkillers in Jackson's death, as well as the stress he was under with an impending world tour, Dr Douglas Zipes, from the ACC, and Dr Vinay Nadkarmi, from the AHA, both weigh in on some of the speculation for heartwire.
Study participants will be randomized to one of four groups: daily vitamin D (2000 IU) and fish oil (1 g); daily vitamin D and fish-oil placebo; daily vitamin-D placebo and fish oil; or daily vitamin-D placebo and fish-oil placebo and followed for five years.
White-coat hypertension and masked hypertension should not be regarded as benign, say the authors of a new 10-year study. The risk of developing sustained hypertension is higher in people with the above two conditions than in those who have normal blood pressure, they found.
Mehmood Patel, an interventional cardiologist from Louisiana, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for performing unnecessary invasive interventional procedures and falsifying patient records.
HIV infection per se is an independent risk factor for preclinical atherosclerosis, with the magnitude of the effect being similar to that of known risk factors, such as smoking and diabetes, a new study has shown.
Identifying these unstable coronary plaques could be used to aggressively treat patients who are at higher risk for future events, according to researchers. There are skeptics, however, and at present even researchers concede there are no different preventive measures available to treat those with high-risk lesions.
Researchers are reporting divergent patterns of cardiovascular events associated with the frequency of migraine attacks with aura: more frequent attacks are associated with higher stroke risk, lower frequencies with higher MI and revascularization.
A population-based cohort study of individuals in Greece has teased out items in the Mediterranean diet that appear to contribute to the increased longevity associated with this diet.
Experts suggest that early PCI is beneficial in STEMI patients already treated with fibrinolysis, as long as it is performed at least two hours after the lytic is given.
Investigators report that echogenicity, an ultrasound-based measure of plaque stability, was significantly improved among patients treated to very low LDL-cholesterol levels.