“I would say we probably need to define another category for severe MR, which is regurgitant volume above 100 mL, which would be a massive degree of MR.”
-Maurice Sarano, MD

Some people also have been advocating echocardiograms, but I don’t think I’ll be out of line with this audience to say that including echocardiograms is a bit on the fringe of what we’re talking about, and really the argument centers more on using the ECG as a primary screening tool.
-Ben Levine, MD

"I think one of the challenges we deal with is how to handle patients who don’t have a high enough blood pressure to get all the evidence-based therapies we want them on. In many patients with MI, at least in the early phase, blood pressure is tenuous."

James de Lemos, MD

“It is very common for these patients to report New York Heart Association functional class 1 after myectomy—that is, they can do virtually anything…”
-Barry Maron, MD

"Hypertension continues to be a major contributor of cardiovascular events, and there is sufficient evidence to indicate that adequate blood pressure (BP) control is associated with marked reductions in the risk of not only target organ damage but also cardiovascular events such as stroke, myocardial infarction, and chronic renal failure."

Carlos M. Ferrario, MD

"These are guidelines created to guide people in decision making, but there is latitude based on patients’ underlying medical conditions, underlying psychiatric conditions, and other issues that may come into play, and all of these things need to be considered."
~ John D. Fisher, MD

“… digoxin is even more pertinent in the context of the increasing prevalence of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.”
~ Michael White, MD

“Certain activities like racquet sports, skiing, and basketball seem to be associated with a greater incidence of acute cardiovascular events. Many of these victims, especially those younger than 35, often have underlying structural cardiovascular abnormalities, most notably hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”
~ Barry Franklin

"African Americans, and in particular African American women … carry the highest risk in the United States for having [CAD, MI, and CV morbidity and mortality]. Unfortunately African Americans, Hispanics and women of all ethnicities suffer from a disparity in access to life saving technologies and pharmacologic therapies."
Christopher Leggett, MD

“I try to avoid the term ‘vulnerable plaque’ because it implies that we possess a crystal ball that can tell the future of a particular lesion based solely on its morphology.”
~ Peter Libby, MD

"This is a growing population and these patients are at risk of going on and developing more symptomatic advanced HF in the future, ... I think there is a substantial need for developing new therapies and new approaches using novel strategies for the management of these patients."
Barry Greenberg, MD

“These therapies are now mainstream for the bridge-to-transplant population, as well as for patients who are ineligible for transplant … The outcomes in the destination therapy populations have been just as good in the transplant population—it’s certainly a leap forward, as compared to the previous generation of devices.”
~ Andrew Boyle, MD

“It could be tremendous for prevention in children. After being followed, maybe they will come back to have fewer drug problems, smoking issues.”
~ James Dalen

“In depression care … we are increasingly calling for the use of standardized instruments and repeated measures.”
~ Alan Gelenberg

"The key point that we found is …that interpreting the treadmill test on the basis of the ST segment alone is obsolete and should be abandoned…I think an important point we need to make to clinicians is that the most important prognostic indicator is functional capacity."
~ Ezra A. Amsterdam, MD

“I think thiazides offer the advantage of an anti-calciuric effect, so that women will tend to retain calcium, which has been demonstrated to facilitate bone mineralization with older age.”
~ Matthew Weir, MD

"One of the more controversial issues in medicine has been that of hypertension in pregnant women. The guidelines have not changed much in the last 50 years, although some effort to update these guidelines has been made recently."

Marvin Moser, MD

“We have two studies, the randomized trial and the observational study that suggest that ACE inhibitors and ARBs … may not be useful, [and] may actually be harmful in patients with AR…”
~ Jeffrey Borer, MD

“Moderate-intensity activity is something that you can do while … talking comfortably, but you cannot sing.”
~ I-Min Lee, MD

"Osteoporosis is a very common problem that primary care practitioners encounter every day, not only with patients who come in with osteoporosis but also with those with a variety of other diseases."

Eric Gall

But for now, I would agree that this intermediate or low-to-intermediate risk group is the best group to target for coronary CT scanning.
-Allen Taylor, MD

"Cholesteryl ester transfer protein has been an important target for the management of risk for cardiovascular disease. It began a number of years ago when it was noted that this protein transfers cholesteryl ester in exchange for triglyceride from different lipoproteins specifically, apoB-lipoproteins to HDL lipoproteins."
~ Michael Davidson, MD

“All the registry data indicate that the ICD is extremely effective in not only treating fast VT or VF, but also in preventing sudden cardiac death.”
~ Mark Estes, MD

"Scientific advances in acupuncture research, coupled with the side effects of treating pain by conventional drugs, have promoted the use of acupuncture dramatically in the past 20 years. It is estimated that over 1 million practitioners outside China administer acupuncture treatments for chronic pain. Of these practitioners, over 300000 are physicians."

Brian Berman

“I believe there are some recent data that this increase [in obesity] seems to have leveled off, but at a rate that is still very unhealthy, with two thirds of the adult population being overweight and one third being obese.”
~ Jerome Fleg, MD

"Guidelines [for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction] don’t have much to say…Treatment remains relatively empiric, and different clinicians have different biases that affect the treatment that they provide…Several small studies have shown that some agents seem to work…[but] there hasn’t been a lot of evidence of benefit."

Barry Massie, MD

"We know that celiac disease is a genetic autoimmune disease, and we know that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is not considered an autoimmune disease… In order to obtain a diagnosis of non-celiac gluten sensitivity, celiac disease and a wheat allergy would both need to be ruled out."

Melinda Dennis

“That implies that the percutaneous-inserted prosthesis implanted inside the existing native valve without excising that valve has hemodynamics after implantation that are nearly as good as a stented bioprosthetic valve replacement. That was surprising to me…”
~ Paul Grayburn, MD

“The new finding was that an elevated heart rate above 70 beats per minute was also associated with an increase in hospitalization for fatal and non-fatal myocardial infarction.”
~ Kim Fox, MD

“Even if people developed diabetes, they would still benefit from statin therapy, so the [JUPITER] panel concluded that the cardiovascular benefit outweighed the increase in the risk of diabetes.”
-Antonio Gotto, MD

“... only about 10% of the patients in RALES were on a beta blocker, but those who were ... seemed to have just as good, if not a better, result from spironolactone."
~ Bertram Pitt, MD

"HF [heart failure] is slightly more common in women—just over half of the HF population—and they certainly have more hypertension than we ever expected."

W. Frank Peacock, MD

“I am greatly concerned that, instead of supplementing what we learn at the bedside, we’re replacing it with modern imaging technology.”
~ John Michael Criley, MD

“Investigations from those centers have shown a two- to three-fold rise in the occurrence of aneurysm disease compared to three to four decades ago. So, this appears to be bona fide, based on pretty comprehensive epidemiologic data from these isolated localities.”
~ John Elefteriades, MD

"Investigators and clinicians alike have realized that the pragmatic approach, using the presence or absence of constipation as a symptom of IBS, may lend itself to the subsequent evaluation and management of the disorder."

Brooks Cash

"The difference in clinical practice is that individuals may not be as stringent at monitoring, and so I think hyperkalemia gets captured potentially a lot sooner in clinical trials as opposed to in clinical practice."
Orly Vardeny, PharmD

“If you show up in the ED and you have either an elevated troponin or an elevated adrenomedullin, your risk of death in the next two weeks is exceedingly high and you ought to get aggressive care.”
~ Alan Maisel, MD

“Aspirin is said to minimize the flushing that occurs with the niacin products. Many of the patients we would consider candidates for niacin need to be on aspirin anyway because they’re high-risk.”
~ Peter H. Jones, MD

“…it’s been bandied about that the classic risk factors account for only 50% of the risk of atherosclerotic vascular disease. … We refer to this as the ‘50% myth’ and we need to refute it.”
~ Ezra Amsterdam MD

“There is no question that these drugs have a major role to play in therapy. In every clinical trial over the past 50 years, where they have been used as monotherapy or in combination with other therapies they not only effectively lowered blood pressure, but morbidity and mortality were reduced not just from stroke, but from heart failure, progression of kidney disease, and coronary disease.”
~ Marvin Moser, MD

"There are mechanistic studies that indicate that the effect of ezetimibe on LDL is really not so much on the production side; turnover studies show that hepatic catabolism of LDL particles is important, and that is remote from the enterocyte and the whole supply side mechanism."
Robert Hegele, MD

"I think everyone knows that there are chronic risk factors such as high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, diabetes, smoking, lack of exercise, and others that contribute to coronary artery disease. We’ve only become aware recently of the issue that there are other kinds of risk factors, including what might be called acute risk factors."
~ Robert A. Kloner, MD, PhD

“There is controversy over whether patients with chronic hypertension who have compensated concentric ventricular hypertrophy ever evolve into more dilated HF.”
~ David Kass, MD

"Many clinicians for years have prescribed niacin for people with low HDL ... so we recently had a shock… when AIM-HIGH was stopped because [there was] no evidence of benefit."
~ Daniel Rader, MD

“I really feel conceptually, and, I guess, philosophically, that ablation can have major favorable effects on peoples’ lives, even in addition to symptom control.”
~ David Callans, MD

“There are a lot of patients who can’t tolerate the higher dose of a statin, and maybe even ... on an every-other-day basis. Then we have to use the other agents that are at our disposal, whether it’s extended release niacin, ezetimibe, a resin, and/or fenofibrate.”
~ Roger S. Blumenthal, MD

"Over the last 2 decades, professional organizations have issued a number of screening guidelines. Initially, the AUA and ACS were very pro-screening. However, over time, they have acknowledged the fact that screening decisions are complicated, involving tradeoffs between benefits and harms, and that we need to help men make informed decisions."

Richard Hoffman

"Certainly, the procedure is performed safely in this study. There were no significant adverse events... In fact, there were fewer events, albeit ... significant in terms of the overall mortality."
~ Vivek Reddy, MD

"When untreated or unsuccessfully treated, these attacks typically last 4 to 72 hours. Migraine varies widely in frequency, severity, and impact on the patient’s quality of life."
~Brian Grosberg

“In essence, there can be some disconnect between what one’s heart function is at baseline and the precipitant that leads to acute decompensation.”
~ Phillip Levy, MD

“Because of socioeconomic limitations [our patients] are not always compliant about their medicines and follow-up, so we tend to err on the side of implanting sooner.”
-Richard Trohman, MD

"Knowing that efficacy is not 100% and that comorbidities can add to a poor response, we realize that some patients need to move on to second-line therapies."

Charles Butrick

“The use of the plasma aldo to renin ratio is a source of considerable confusion …the ratio is irrelevant as a screening test for primary aldosteronism.”
~ Norman Kaplan, MD

“...the value of performing a Valsalva procedure cannot be underestimated when using agitated saline for the detection of a right to left shunt.”
~ Michael Main, MD

"I believe there has been a natural progression to spiraling costs. Despite what has or has not been achieved up to this point with reform, we have reached a crisis regarding out-of-control costs, and something must be done about it."

Christopher Pastore, MD

"One thing that I notice…is the lack of attention to IBS compared to Crohn’s disease and other GI disorders.…The unpredictability of IBS and its symptoms really affects the quality of life more than we give it credit for, in comparison to diseases that may have a greater impression on the doctor because they are associated with inflammation."

Mark Pimentel

“The NIH State-of-the-Science Conference concluded that [antipsychotics and barbituates] have significant risks and cannot be recommended for the treatment of insomnia. So I think that’s important for clinicians to remember.”
~ Sonia Ancoli-Israel

"HIV clinicians often spend more time addressing comorbid chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental health and substance disorders, liver disease, and cancer than managing antiretrovirals or opportunistic infections."

Todd Korthuis

"We have evidence of various properties of HDL [high-density lipoprotein] that might be theoretically useful for describing its potential benefit, but we don’t have either a clinical trial or other prospective evidence indicating that any of these properties are explanatory."

John LaRosa, MD

“Ezetimibe has a role for LDL cholesterol lowering when other options have been exhausted. A change in this approach will require compelling evidence from a clinical events trial.”
~ Robert S. Rosenson, MD

“So, do you think that ED is caused by HF or do you think it's just an association of two conditions with identical risk factors?”
~ Ernst R. Schwarz, MD, PhD

Although the two drugs lowered central pulse pressure in the brachial artery to the same degree, nebivolol lowered central pulse pressure more than atenolol.
-John Cockcroft, MD

“We have substantial outcomes data with spironolactone and eplerenone; eplerenone in the post-MI patient, spironolactone more so in the Class III or Class IV heart failure patient. Clearly there has been a renaissance for the drugs.”
~ Bill Frishman, MD

“Atrial fibrillation always looks essentially the same on the ECG, but it’s certainly not one disorder.”
~ James Reiffel, MD

“I always worry that we haven’t had the patients in there long enough to finally tidy up their drugs, particularly the diuretics, to make sure they understand instructions.”
~ Ileana Piña, MD

“…many of our clinicians get caught up in the diagnosis of coronary disease... I strongly believe that this is not the purpose of the ED evaluation.”
-Michael Farkouh, MD, MSc

"According to the ACC/AHA guidelines, routine exercise testing in the asymptomatic patient is a class III indication and therefore not recommended because the information you get is going to be more confusing and may lead to unnecessary further testing that could lead to complications."

Joseph Alpert