We think you’ll find this of interest. The American Heart Association last month issued revised guidelines for preventing cardiovascular disease in women.

The change that hits you right off is the title’s shift from “Evidence-Based” to “Effectiveness-Based,” emphasizing the writing committee’s belief that the way things go in clinical trials doesn’t always hold in the more chaotic environment of daily practice.

Also of note is the fact that the committee wants clinicians to take women’s reproductive histories into account (they say, interestingly, that pre-eclampsia may be taken as an indicator of underlying inflammatory processes — a kind of proxy for a failed stress test, if you will). And depression, in their view, may be a signal of vulnerability to unhealthy lifestyle choices and an indicator of how adherent to treatment the patient will be, and so a screening for that condition is in order among women presenting with cardiovascular disease.

Join our conversation with the chair of the writing committee, Dr. Lori Mosca.

Interview-related links:

The SSRI escitalopram beat out a placebo in ameliorating the frequency and severity of hot flashes in menopausal women. Would cheaper SSRIs also do the trick? We talk with the first author of the JAMA paper.

Interview-related links:

The Infectious Diseases Society of American last week issued clinical practice guidelines on dealing with methicillin-resistant S. aureus infection. We interview the principal author of those guidelines, Dr. Catherine Liu of the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Liu responds to the criticism leveled earlier this week against all IDSA guidelines, for their apparent lack of high-level evidence to back their recommendations.

Listen in.  If you have a comment, please leave it here and we’ll post it quickly.

Links related to the interview:

Dr. Danielle Scheurer and Joe Elia have a free-form discussion on what’s happened over the past year.

Links to those stories (and, sometimes, interviews) are attached here.

If you’d like to suggest another, or comment on our selection, drop us a note in the comments field.

Discussion-related links (they are all free links):

This week’s guest, Dr. Sripal Bangalore, finds no evidence that use of the standard anti-hypertensive drugs increases risks for cancer. His meta-analysis did find, however, an indication that ARBs and ACE inhibitors, when used in combination, increase risks modestly. Even with the short follow-up, Bangalore says clinicians should find reassurance in the results.

Listen in.

Interview-related links:

We’ve got Dr. Harlan Krumholz, editor of Journal Watch Cardiology and CardioExchange, to guide us through a week’s worth of the top research presented at the American Heart Association in Chicago.

Interview-related links (in the order we discuss them in the interview):

We talk with Dr. Denise Aberle, a principal investigator on the CT-for-lung-cancer-screening trial that the National Cancer Institute stopped last week. NCI stopped the trial when the trial’s monitoring committee found a 20% decrease in lung cancer deaths among those randomized to CT screening.

Listen in for a fascinating look at what happens when trials stop — and most especially for the implications of this one.

Please make your comments here on the website.

Interview-related links:

Our conversation is with Dr. Patricia Dykes of Boston’s Partners HealthCare. She’s first author on a paper published in JAMA earlier this week. In her study of fall prevention in hospitals, she and her team randomized eight medical units in four Boston-area hospitals either to their usual standards of fall prevention or to use of the “fall-prevention toolkit” — an intervention customized for each patient. The results are encouraging.

Interview-related links:

News-related links:

(advertisement)

QuantiaMD & Journal Watch National Case Challenge – $2500 Grand Prize

Entering is easy and takes about 15 minutes – simply provide basic information about your case using our one-page entry form.   Submissions are due by November 8, 2010.  Finalists will be chosen by the editorial boards of QuantiaMD and Journal Watch.  We will work with finalists to produce and publish a full 4 to 8 minute interactive case.  These cases and their presenters will be widely promoted and the grand prize winner shall be selected by popular vote.   We encourage all of you to participate in the contest by voting on these finalist cases and help chose the Grand Prize winner.

Click here to participate: http://quantiamd.com/qmdjwncc_ack

OK, now what can be done to control hypertension among African American men? What about recruiting barbershops to put a shoulder to the wheel? They’re community centers, trusted sources of gossip and advice, and places of relaxation. In Texas, a group of researchers undertook a randomized trial in black-owned barbershops in which barbers took blood pressures and made referrals to clinicians when necessary. Listen in on how it went.

Interview-related link:

News-related links:

(advertisement)

QuantiaMD & Journal Watch National Case Challenge – $2500 Grand Prize

Entering is easy and takes about 15 minutes – simply provide basic information about your case using our one-page entry form.   Submissions are due by November 8, 2010.  Finalists will be chosen by the editorial boards of QuantiaMD and Journal Watch.  We will work with finalists to produce and publish a full 4 to 8 minute interactive case.  These cases and their presenters will be widely promoted and the grand prize winner shall be selected by popular vote.   We encourage all of you to participate in the contest by voting on these finalist cases and help chose the Grand Prize winner.

Click here to participate: http://quantiamd.com/qmdjwncc_ack

In the face of scheduling problems we’ve had to postpone this week’s interview and use, instead, one from early this summer. It’s on NSAIDs, and if you missed it, it’s worth a listen. If you didn’t miss it, then join us again next week, but give a listen to the news round-up before you head off to rake leaves….

The pace of suggestions and comments has quickened, and I’m grateful. Please keep them coming to [email protected].

Interview-related link:

News-related links:

*  *  *

(advertisement)

QuantiaMD & Journal Watch National Case Challenge – $2500 Grand Prize

Entering is easy and takes about 15 minutes – simply provide basic information about your case using our one-page entry form.   Submissions are due by November 8, 2010.  Finalists will be chosen by the editorial boards of QuantiaMD and Journal Watch.  We will work with finalists to produce and publish a full 4 to 8 minute interactive case.  These cases and their presenters will be widely promoted and the grand prize winner shall be selected by popular vote.   We encourage all of you to participate in the contest by voting on these finalist cases and help chose the Grand Prize winner.

Click here to participate: http://quantiamd.com/qmdjwncc_ack