Considerations for return-to-play On March 11, 2020, just prior to the tip-off for the Utah Jazz versus Oklahoma City Thunder game, the National Basketball Association season was abruptly halted in dramatic fashion after it was disclosed one player had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. In subsequent and rapid fashion, other iconic American sporting events were canceled and ... Continue Reading
Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
By Chad Everett Miller, MD
An uncommon but lethal cause of right heart failure While not as common as left heart failure, right heart failure, too, is a major contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), while a relatively uncommon disease, carries a poor prognosis even today as patients succumb to right heart failure. In recent decades, the ... Continue Reading
Cardiology at Grady: Pioneering and Innovating through the Years
By Nanette K. Wenger, MD, MACC, MACP, FAHA and Allen L. Dollar, MD, FACC, FACP
In the 1960s and 1970s, Grady Memorial Hospital was the major teaching hospital of Emory University’s medical school, such that most of the students and medical residents (and subsequently subspecialty residents and/or fellows) were based at Grady. With Dr. Willis J. Hurst as both Chairman of Medicine and Chief of Cardiology, a great deal of attention was focused on the ... Continue Reading
Statins, PCI or Nutrition – Which Matters?
By Neil Cooper, M.D., MHA, MSc
After my ST elevation myocardial infarction in 2012 and emergent deployment of left anterior descending stents, the first book I read was Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell Esselstyn, M.D. After reading other sentinel scientific studies on nutrition and heart disease, I realized the answer to the question of what’s necessary, statins, percutaneous coronary ... Continue Reading
The Emergence of Sports Cardiology
By Walter E. Mashman, M.D.*, Kathleen Turchin, BSN*, and Jonathan H. Kim, M.D.#
In 490 BC, after the Greek town of Marathon successfully defended Persian attack, the messenger Pheidippides is said to have run to Athens to deliver the news. Upon arrival, as he exclaimed “Nike!†(victory, win), Pheidippides collapsed and perished. While this legendary story represents the premise for the modern-day marathon, it can also be said to lay claim to the ... Continue Reading
ExtraCorporal Membrane Oxygenation
by Dr. Peter Barrett More than 40 years since it was first used in 1971, ECMO has become an integral part of treatment in the adult critical care community Extracorporal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a rapidly advancing form of mechanical circulatory support. ECMO was first used in 1971 by Dr. Robert Bartlett in the neonatal population for meconium aspiration. The ... Continue Reading
The Future of Valve Therapies
By Vivek Rajagopal, MD; Meredith Brazil, PA-C; Frances Lockwood, PA-C; Morris Brown, MD; Jim Kauten, MD; Christopher Meduri, MD, MPH The gold standard for treating valve disease for decades has been cardiac surgery, but transcatheter valve therapies have proved effective in numerous clinic trials. In particular, clinical trials have shown superior outcomes of ... Continue Reading
Regenerative Medicine
Does regenerative medicine hold the keys to rebuilding damaged organs, tissue and muscle? Atlanta Medicine recently spoke with some Atlanta area researchers about the promise regenerative medicine holds for the future of medicine. According to Arshed A. Quyyumi, M.D., a professor of medicine in Emory University School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology, stem cell therapy ... Continue Reading
Hypertension and Sexual Dysfunction: Let’s Start The Conversation
By Brittany Thomas, M.D. It has been estimated that more than 150 million men worldwide have some degree of erectile dysfunction. The prevalence of erectile dysfunction is approximately two fold higher in hypertensive patients compared to normotensive patients. Due to the private nature of this problem, erectile dysfunction is often overlooked and left to the patient to ... Continue Reading
12 Tips for Hypertension in the Athlete
By John Davis Cantwell, M.D., MACP, FACC For the past 40 years, I have been doing pre-season Atlanta Braves baseball physicals at their spring training facility in Florida. Thirty-five years ago, I began doing pre-season cardiovascular examinations on freshman Georgia Tech athletes. Usually every year there are several athletes noted to have hypertension. This is not ... Continue Reading
Sports Cardiology & Women’s Heart Health
By Jonathan Kim, M.D. Case #1: A 55-year-old female triathlete self-refers herself to your clinic complaining of exertional dyspnea on exertion. She has been a high-level recreational endurance athlete for the last 25 years, competing in 25 marathons and 8 Ironman triathlons. At baseline, she runs 40 miles per week when not training for competition. She states that for the ... Continue Reading
Clinical Trial Demonstrates High Implant Success of World’s Smallest Pacemaker
By Jennifer Johnson McEwen A study presented this week at the 2015 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the world's smallest, minimally invasive cardiac pacemaker — the Micra Transcatheter Pacing System (TPS) — was successfully implanted in nearly all of the patients participating ... Continue Reading
Peripartum Cardiomyopathy
By David W. Markham, M.D., MSc A 29-year-old woman presents two weeks after delivery of her second child complaining of lower extremity edema and dyspnea on exertion. She had mild dyspnea at the end of her first pregnancy two years ago, but she has had an uneventful second pregnancy. She has no other medical problems. The patient has a faint third heart sound (S3) on cardiac ... Continue Reading
Gender and Ethnic Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease
By Carolina Gongora, M.D. About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year, corresponding to 1 in 4 deaths. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the No. 1 cause of death in both women and men and is highest in the South and lowest in the West. Unfortunately, half of Americans have at least one of the recognized risk factors for CVD, including ... Continue Reading
Study Shows that Survival Rates Have Improved in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrests
Researchers have determined that survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) improved in communities across the U.S. between 2005 and 2012. Improvements that impacted survival rates were noted in both pre-hospital and in-hospital care. Bystander CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and on-site automated external defibrillator (AED) use improved during the interval ... Continue Reading
