Patient Pulse

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Dr Gibson from Harvard's Baim Institue discusses anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease with Dr. Thomas Nero.  The also discuss the concern about bleeding with current medical therapy and future options for patients.

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Dr Peter Toth discusses with Dr. Thomas Nero the new classes of diabetes medications, SGLT2 inhibitors (eg Jardiance) and GLP1 receptor agonists (eg Ozempic and Munjaro.)  These drugs have been in the news due to an impressive effect on weight reduction, but they also improve cardiovascular outcomes in diabetic and non-diabetic patients.

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In this brief discussion, Dr. Toth discusses the current recommendations on decreasing cardiovascular risk and where we are headed to decrease your risk of a heart attack.

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Coronary inflammation is the final pathway for the development of coronary artery disease.  Dr. Paul Ridker discusses the role of inflammation, hs-CRP and therapies with Dr. Thomas Nero.

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Dr Christopher Cannon discusses the EVOLVE-MI trial to decrease cholesterol with  Evolocumab early after Myocardial Infarction as well as the rational for a less intensive way to study patients with open label, pragmatic clinical trials.  

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Dr Kebrina Bartley discuses Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) and Heart Disease in Women with Dr Sharonne Hayes, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.  Their wide ranging conversation discuses SCAD, the difference between SCAD and atherosclerotic heart disease and approaching the female patient who presents with chest pain.  The also take a brief dive into the importance involving women in clinical research and broadening or perspective.  (audio editor's note, please excuse the audio quality - mea culpa)

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Dr. Kabrina Bartley interviews Dr. Thomas Nero on ways patients can improve their outcomes by understanding their medical issues and becoming more involved with their care.  These a a few very simple steps anyone can do

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Dr. Nero discusses with ways to evaluate coronary artery disease with Dr. Cheerag Shirodaria from Oxford.  Dr. Shirodaria and his team at Caristo Diagnostics have developed a ground breaking technology that allows us to evaluate not just the severity of a coronary artery lesion, but also how inflamed it is and how likely it is to cause a heart attack in the future.  We also briefly discuss the role of CT coronary calcium scoring, CT angiography and stress testing.

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Dr. Kebrina Bartley discusses cholesterol management with Dr. Thomas Nero.  They go over the important roll that statins play in coronary artery disease prevention especially in association with diet and exercise.  The also discuss other options for lowering cholesterol and briefly discuss the approach to treating patients who feel that they may be having side effects from the medications

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If you REALLY want to understand what your doctor is telling you and how she came to the decisions that she did, then you have to know a little bit about medical statistics.  In this episode, we will go over how we make a diagnosis with testing, how to  measure benefit of a treatment in relative vs absolute risk reduction , and how to "judge"  a study  is from a statistical point of view.  These concepts are not simple and it may take one or two times through to understand, but in the end it will be worth it.  Finally, if you ever want to impress someone at a cocktail party with terms like "Bayesian Analysis" or "P-Value" well here is your chance.