January-February 2011

Digital Edition
Cardiovascular Trends to Watch in 2011
Based on my observations and the devices that caught the eye of the doctors on the Diagnostic & Interventional Cardiology Editorial Advisory Board, we created the following predictions of what will be hot trends to watch in 2011.
Most Wired Cardiac Departments
As healthcare marches toward completely wireless electronic medical records, Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology will periodically highlight how cardiac departments around the country are working toward this goal.
Tips When Prepping for Radial Procedures
The femoral artery approach for cardiac catheterizations has been used as the gold-standard in the United States, but there is growing interest in the transradial approach. One of the main advantages of radial access is increased safety with fewer bleeding complications.
Single-Database Radiology/Cardiology PACS: Greater Than the Sum of its Parts
Warren Hospital, an acute care community hospital serving Warren and Hunterdon counties in rural New Jersey, supports 214 patient beds and 140,000 outpatient visits per year.
Connectivity Tips
Healthcare IT vendors offer a variety of cardiovascular information systems (CVIS), picture archiving and communications systems (PACS), imaging and diagnostic hardware they say will integrate into a seamless electronic medical record. However, end-users still complain this level of interoperability does not exist.
New Approaches, Drugs for Antiplatelet Therapy
Clopidogrel (Plavix) has been the standard antiplatelet therapy for a decade, but it is now facing challenges with the fact that one-third of patients do not respond to the agent and new drugs offer alternatives.
Reconstruction Software Improves Quality of Low-Dose CT Scans
Computed tomography (CT) offers a very important, noninvasive diagnostic tool, but the price of high image quality sometimes comes with a cost of high radiation dose. This is especially true of CT angiography (CTA), which may require imaging several cardiac cycles.
Trends in ECG Stress Test Systems
Recent advances in electrocardiogram (ECG) stress testing systems include better waveform analysis algorithms, improved connectivity with electronic medical records and wireless lead systems to untether patients from the machines. In addition, Web-based software and ECG management systems are making it possible to access ECG stress reports and waveforms from anywhere at any time.
An Option to Replace Drug-Eluting Stents
In the world of endovascular devices, the rule is no longer one size fits all. The recent increase in the variety of stents for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) offers the physician of a patient with coronary artery disease (CAD) the ability to tailor treatment to the individual, rather than tailor the patient to the therapy.