ACC, AHA Issue Updated Performance Measures for Adults with Atrial Fibrillation or Atrial Flutter
ECG with paroxysm correct form of atrial flutter. Getty Images
December 23, 2020 The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) has made two updates to its Clinical Performance and Quality Measures on Atrial Fibrillation or Atrial Flutter. The writing committee for this 2020 document incorporated two changes to performance measures in accordance with the 2019 ACC/AHA/Heart Rhythm Society atrial fibrillation guideline focused update.
Atrial fibrillation (AF or Afib) increases the risk of ischemic stroke five fold, and in the setting of mitral stenosis it drives up the risk of stroke twenty fold over that of patients with a normal heartbeat. Atrial flutter also significantly raises the chance of stroke, and the likelihood increases with certain risk factors.
December 23, 2020
Guidelines for the management of valvular heart disease (VHD) have been refreshed by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association the first full revision since 2014. Most salient among the changes is the inclusion of the pivotal low-risk TAVR trials that led to US Food and Drug Administration approval for that indication last fall.
With Catherine M. Otto, MD (University of Washington, Seattle), and Rick A. Nishimura, MD (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN), as co-chairs, the multisociety-produced document was published online last week in both
Circulation and the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Patrick T. O’Gara, MD (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA), one of its authors, told TCTMD that, as for any guideline recommendations, what motivated the revision was the “publication of practice-changing science.” Beyond the low-risk TAVR trials, other influential studies included here are COAPT and MITRA-FR, both in the mitra
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Cardiologists Say These Are The Worst Foods For Your Heart, And There Goes My Whole Diet
By Karla Walsh of Delish |
Take heart: What’s on your plate can help maintain your cardiac capacity.“Heart-healthy foods contain nutrients that have been shown to benefit the cardiovascular system or reduce the risk of developing heart disease by lowering bad LDL cholesterol and blood triglycerides, reducing blood pressure, controlling weight and/or improving insulin sensitivity,” says Rania Batayneh, MPH, the owner of Essential Nutrition For You and the author of
Omega-3s, potassium, calcium, magnesium, fiber, phytonutrients and antioxidants earn top marks in these categories, making the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet top choices for those seeking to maintain or improve heart health.
December 22, 2020
Clinicians have a new tool to help them in deciding how best to balance risks and benefits when there’s a need to mix anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy in patients with A-fib or venous thromboembolism (VTE). It comes in the form of an expert consensus decision pathway from the American College of Cardiology (ACC).
“In general, we have recommended against routine use of triple therapy, which would be [dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT)] plus anticoagulation,” Dharam Kumbhani, MD (UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX), chair of the writing committee, told TCTMD.
Double therapy is the way to go for most cases “based on the concordance of all the data that’s available,” he said, “and several meta-analyses that have looked at that and provided that conclusion.” There are some scenarios when a patient has a high thrombotic risk and low bleeding risk, for example for which physicians may opt for triple therapy for a short duration, Kumbhani no