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Volume 7 Issue 7, July 2010

Editorial

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Research Highlight

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News & Views

  • The relationship between patent foramen ovale and migraine is a hotly debated issue. Conflicting data on the association or independence of these conditions have been reported by various study groups around the world. Now, a large-scale case–control study has shown no association between the two entities; however, there were a number of methodological flaws in this study and we are unlikely to see the end of the controversy in the near future.

    • Gianluca Rigatelli
    News & Views
  • The impact of overlap of drug-eluting stents on clinical and angiographic outcomes is controversial. Individuals with long coronary lesions requiring implantation of multiple stents are an important patient subgroup for whom careful evaluation and decision-making with optimal stent deployment is needed to ensure the best possible short-term and long-term results.

    • Antonio Colombo
    • Rasha Al-Lamee
    News & Views
  • CABG surgery has been considered the optimal revascularization strategy for patients with diabetes mellitus who have left main and/or multivessel coronary artery disease. The results of a new analysis of data from the SYNTAX trial challenge this conventional wisdom and highlight additional coronary revascularization options to physicians and patients.

    • G. Robert Myers
    • William S. Weintraub
    News & Views
  • Whether thiazolidinediones should be used to treat patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus is controversial, as studies on the cardiovascular effects of these drugs have produced conflicting results. A trial in which rosiglitazone and glipizide were compared supports earlier findings that rosiglitazone does not have an adverse effect on the progression of coronary atherosclerosis.

    • Michael E. Farkouh
    • Valentin Fuster
    News & Views
  • The diagnosis of diabetes mellitus in clinical practice has been mainly based on the measurement of glucose levels in blood. Growing evidence, including results from a new large-scale population study, however, strongly suggests that the assessment of glycated hemoglobin levels has advantages over measurement of glucose levels in predicting the risk of developing diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

    • Nicholas J. Wareham
    • Roman Pfister
    News & Views
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Review Article

  • This Review discusses the effects of intensive glycemic control on cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes, and examines key factors in recent intervention trials that might have contributed to their disparate findings. The authors suggest that care of these patients should focus on achieving current treatment goals, rather than on changes to glycemic targets.

    • Aparna Brown
    • L. Raymond Reynolds
    • Dennis Bruemmer
    Review Article
  • The number of patients undergoing implantation of a cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is increasing, as the indications for device therapy have broadened. Despite the mortality benefits associated with ICDs, they can also cause substantial complications. Drs. Wazni and Wilkoff explore the issues involved in managing patients with an ICD and discuss approaches for reducing these adverse effects, from prevention of infection, and the choice of lead and implantation technique, to strategies for programming and monitoring the device.

    • Oussama Wazni
    • Bruce L. Wilkoff
    Review Article
  • Echocardiography is commonly used to assess hypertrophic myopathies. The authors of this Review outline imaging modalities that are more sensitive than standard echocardiography, which can be used to determine characteristic changes in regional deformation at an earlier stage, and provide more information about the underlying processes associated with different hypertrophic myopathies.

    • Maja Cikes
    • George R. Sutherland
    • Bart H. Bijnens
    Review Article
  • Diagnosis of hereditary transthyretin-related amyloidosis (ATTR) is challenging owing to its extremely heterogeneous phenotype. The existence of predominantly cardiac presentations should prompt cardiologists to consider ATTR in patients with otherwise unexplained left ventricular wall thickening. Orthotopic liver transplantation (or combined heart–liver transplantation) can potentially provide surgical 'gene therapy' in patients with ATTR, provided that diagnosis is timely.

    • Claudio Rapezzi
    • Candida Cristina Quarta
    • Angelo Branzi
    Review Article
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Opinion

  • The current guidelines for prevention of cardiovascular disease are based on estimates of long-term risk. Smeeth and Hingorani recommend awareness of the importance of fluctuations of risk over short periods of time and suggest a new paradigm for management of cardiovascular disease that is based on targeting therapy to short periods of enhanced risk.

    • Liam Smeeth
    • Aroon D. Hingorani
    Opinion
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