“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

"With the improved respiratory flow monitoring that we have nowadays using a pressure transducer technique, the accuracy of detecting obstructive events— particularly when we speak about apneas— really has improved."
~ Ana Krieger, MD, MPH

"So in someone who’s in his 70s, do you think we are where we can say that one really ought to turn to destination therapy VADs?"
~ James Young, 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

“As we entered this era of drug-eluting stents, we obtained some evidence that we are decreasing the need for repeat procedures, but the question remains, is it really as safe as surgery?”
~ Spencer King, MD

"[One of the important questions that the results of galectin-3 testing raises is ‘should we be starting aldosterone blockers immediately in the patient presenting with acute heart failure and preserved ejection fraction?’]"

Frank Peacock, MD

Adding Experience to the Evidence

“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

"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

“I think it’s been an evolving process and I think it’s a good one. Moreover, transparently acknowledging a medical writer’s contributions clearly highlights the fact that this is a legitimate area of scientific endeavor.”
-Carol Sanes-Miller

“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

“…this is an exciting new frontier for hypertension research and management. Masked hypertension is not just not a curiosity.”
~ Robert Phillips, 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

“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

“There are lots of reasons to be skeptical about the results of randomized trials ... There’s at least a collection of circumstances in which when they come head-to-head, it seems that you agree that the results of randomized trials would trump prior physiologic reasoning and clinical experience.”
~ Gordon Guyatt

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

"I recommend to people who want to take home BPs, do it with a protocol. They take their BP twice a day for two weeks and that’s recently been shown to be all you really need."
~ Henry Black, MD

“I think the field has begun to move away from looking at percent inhibition with respect to a given drug, and toward looking at the residual platelet reactivity during treatment, and how we can associate that with outcomes in patients. Certainly, there have been ample studies demonstrating that high on-treatment platelet reactivity is associated with a greater risk of subsequent cardiovascular events.1–3"

~ David J. Schneider, MD

"Behavioral interventions have yielded improvements on the order of 35% to 55% reductions in headache from pretreatment to post-treatment indicating that they're viable interventions. Those observed outcomes are approximately equivalent to the best prophylactic medications for primary headache."
Donald B. Penzien

"Narcolepsy is a disorder that’s interesting because it typically does get missed. Although patients may present with complaints of tiredness and fatigue, very often people don’t think of narcolepsy as being a possible cause."
~Michael Thorpy

“[Redistribution of abdominal fat is] one of the most rewarding things that we can see, as physicians caring for these patients, because we know that ... means we’re going to see gradual improvements in the HDL and triglycerides over time.”
~ Malissa Wood, MD

“Some tend to use sildenafil as a starting agent since there is evidence of symptomatic and functional benefit. However, this remains controversial.”
-Patricia A. Uber, PharmD

"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

"In my opinion, any patient who has had a history of episodic migraine and then has headaches on more than 15 days a month or more than half the time, should be considered for onabotulinum toxin A."

Sheena K. Aurora

“Various studies have shown that [with complementary and alternative therapies] the patient’s satisfaction is markedly increased, and there is a shortening of the length of the hospital stay.”
~ Gulshan Sethi, MD

“Reversing obesity prevalence in the United States to that of a decade ago has been estimated to save US adults 111,206 total knee replacements."
~ Gary Williams, 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

“We need to differentiate real life from what goes on in the clinical trials, because so often in the clinical trials patients with a history of myopathy … are excluded from the trials.”
~ Peter Toth, MD

“Most of the time we’re talking about an absolute difference in diabetes incidence within these trials of a couple percent.”
~ Bill Cushman, 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

“Another critical step in the selection of patients is the assessment of aortic valve anatomy of the vascular accesses, and the presence of comorbidities. The main cause of mortality within the first year after TAVR are the comorbidities.”
~ Gian Paolo Ussia, 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 completely agree that we should avoid this kind of storm during the dialysis session. There are so many changes in the different ions that could trigger some arrhythmia. I completely agree that we should avoid important gradients, whether the ion is calcium or potassium."

Pieter Evenepoel

"It seems like the biggest change in the guidelines is the addition of ticagrelor, or BRILINTA®.… a new antiplatelet therapy that has been shown to be effective in ACS. Actually, based on the PLATO trial and the current [US FDA] rulings, it’s the only antiplatelet agent that is superior to clopidogrel for reducing cardiovascular death following ACS.…"

Carl J. Lavie, MD

“The Lyon Mediterranean Diet Study had a 70% reduction in cardiac events—a benefit that exceeded that of most drug trials.”
~ Stephen Devries

“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

"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

“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

“I think what’s difficult is to take observational data and to say, well, because there’s a relationship … then lower the levels of all these things … but I really think that to decide whether to treat those particular risk factors, and how low to go with those, we … need clinical trial data.”
-William Cushman, MD

"...we all agree that one of our strong recommendations from this particular discussion is going to be that every institution should have a protocol for the basic framework of applying these treatments for ACS."

Christopher B. Granger, MD

"There are a lot of… small studies that have evaluated whether or not the addition of a thiazide such as metolazone to a loop diuretic augments sodium excretion and urine output."
~ Tien Ng, PharmD

“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

"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

“I have to say my view of CRT is that it probably does make the heart better. Therefore the assumption that sicker patients are going die of progressive heart failure rather than from an arrhythmia can be overcome by having a CRT device in the patient who has significant dyssynchrony or wide QRS.”
~ Barry Massie, 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

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

“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

"Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is increasingly recognized as a significant public health problem. Recent research has shown that it is related to a number of common medical illnesses such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes."

Stuart F. Quan

"The difference between a prevalence of disease in patients with normal results or normal testing was in the order of 15% to 20%, which really questions how much better testing is than just flipping a coin and whether it might be just as well to proceed with angiography."
~ Mario Garcia, 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

“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

"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

“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

"[There] is a group of migraineurs who have increased frequency and some change in quality. The treatment effects are perhaps important for them…Does analgesic use drive or follow the problem?"

Peter Goadsby

“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

"I think one of the things that is important for physicians to understand is that … we’ve had a long history of using a very complicated drug, warfarin. The new drugs are a significant advance, but they’re not necessarily going to be a cakewalk."
Peter Kowey, 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

“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

"We are now seeing many such patients [with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction]. They’re often elderly women with many comorbid conditions, and they’re sometimes admitted with atrial fibrillation, which makes the estimation of diastolic function problematic."

Gary Francis, 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

"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

"I would like to say there are many patients who get treated with clopidogrel. This applies to the PLATO trial as well. Since 46% of patients in the PLATO trial had already received clopidogrel administered in-hospital before getting randomized,² a clinician can still safely load with ticagrelor 180 mg followed by 90 mg twice daily."

Carl J. Lavie, MD

"Low back pain is a perfect example of how complexity based on biopsychosocial-spiritual influences can influence the severity of pain as well as suffering."

David Rakel

“There’s no question that aspirin decreases non-fatal MI in randomized trials of primary prevention and their meta-analyses, probably by about 20% … Because the number of deaths is not decreased, people assume that there’s no merit in preventing nonfatal MI. I don’t agree with that.”
~ James Dalen

"Patients and physicians may be attracted to a less invasive angioplasty and stenting approach for suitable coronary lesions, however, there are issues with the recommended anticoagulation regimens, which could include two antiplatelet drugs and another anticoagulant if the patient is in atrial fibrillation."
~ William Frishman, MD

So in other words, for coronary artery disease, a clear J-shaped curve; for stroke there was no J-shaped curve.
-Franz Messerli, 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

“…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