Clinicians often dichotomize coronary artery disease (CAD) on the basis of obstruction to blood flow given the implications of this threshold on considerations for revascularization. As a result, nonobstructive CAD is often characterized as less significant, although this may oversimplify the risks associated with nonobstructive disease. In this retrospective cohort of patients who underwent elective […]
Tag: coronary artery disease
Kidney stones linked with modest increased risk of coronary disease
Nephrolithiasis (kidney stones) is an increasingly common condition occurring more frequently in men than women; over the last three decades the overall prevalence in the US population has risen to 8.8%. Links between nephrolithiasis and other systemic diseases have been noted, including subclinical atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. However, previous studies looking […]
Benefits of beta-blockade in stable coronary disease may be overestimated
While the benefits of beta-blockade following myocardial infarction (MI) are well known, these benefits have been extrapolated to all patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), and even to high risk patients without coronary artery disease. However, beta-blockers also have a number of side effects and their tolerability is not ideal. Therefore, the objective of this […]
CE-MARC shows strength of perfusion MRI
In recent years it has become clear that treatment of coronary artery disease – and in particular percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) – must be guided by imaging techniques that give some information on the extent of myocardial ischaemia. While nuclear medicine techniques such as SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) have become widespread, and have a […]
No benefit from screening asymptomatic type 2 diabetics for CAD
Should patients with type 2 diabetes be screened for coronary artery disease if asymptomatic? In the DIAD study (Detection of Ischemia in Asymptomatic Diabetics), 1123 patients with type 2 diabetes and no symptoms of coronary artery disease (CAD) were randomly assigned to be screened with adenosine-stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) or to no screening. The […]