More articles from Cardiology Dialogues
- Lowering LDL in patients with heart disease: How aggressive should you be?
A debate on whether to use a fixed or an individualized LDL target
- Cardioversion or rate control for atrial fibrillation: balancing risks and benefits
In managing atrial fibrillation, should physicians try to restore and maintain sinus rhythm, or take a more conservative approach and try only to control the heart rate and prevent thromboembolism?
- Preoperative evaluation before noncardiac vascular surgery
How to assess a patient’s perioperative risk, deciding when clinical factors are sufficient to gauge risk and when pharmacologic stress testing is needed.
- Preventive cardiology: Whose job is it? Who will pay for it? What is the best strategy?
Should cardiologists, internists, or nurse practitioners lead prevention efforts? What is the role of diet in the era of the statins?
- Practice guidelines and physician scorecards: grading the graders
A discussion of the pros and cons of different tools to assess the quality of medical care.
- Should community hospitals perform angioplasty for acute myocardial infarction?
A debate about the advantages and disadvantages of community hospitals performing angioplasty for myocardial infarction, even if they have no facilities for heart surgery.
- Transesophageal echocardiography: why and when to use it
In this open discussion of an important health care utilization issue, panelists expound on the appropriateness of TEE in several clinical situations.