University of Iowa marketing professor Tom Gruca on overcoming rural America’s cardiologist access problem.

Cardiology

The 35 Best Cardiology Newsletters, Websites, and Influencers to Follow

We’re dedicating today’s top story to the people and publications that we rely on to find the most interesting cardiology stories from across the web. Assuming that you already subscribe to Cardiac Wire, these are the 35 other newsletters, websites, and social media accounts to follow if you really want to know what’s happening in cardiology.

I’ll always check the mainstream cardiology news websites (TCTMD, Medscape, et al.) and the major cardiovascular journals (JACC, AHA, JAMA Cardiology, etc.), but in order to find news that you won’t see elsewhere and understand how it impacts care, the juiciest stories usually come from the newsletters and websites run by people of cardiology.

• CardioNerds – An excellent and fun resource for cardiology education
• Circulation on the Run – We appreciate recaps “for busy clinicians on the run”
• Gregory Katz’s Substack – Interesting and educational takes on cardiology
• Numerical Heart – His gene editing pieces have been excellent
• Dr Paddy Barrett – An unexpected mix of cardiology and philosophy
• Sensible Medicine – They almost always influence my coverage
• Stop and Think – The stories (and criticisms) behind the studies
• The Skeptical Cardiologist – Skeptical takes on the latest cardiology topics

The Best Cardiology Social Media “Influencers” to Follow

Nowadays the juiciest news isn’t even published, it’s posted. And it’s often posted by these legends of cardiology social media.

• C. Michael Gibson, MD – Could be a journalist if he wasn’t a physician
• Christopher Cannon, MD – The source for today’s most important research
• Prof Darrel Francis – A very funny and informative cardiology follow
• Deepak L. Bhatt, MD – He’s everywhere
• Erin D. Michos, MMD – Prolific cardiology researcher and poster
• Giovanni Lorenz, DO – The source for cardiovascular imaging
• Gregg W. Stone, MD – Always solid interventional insights
• John Mandrola, MD – Where we look for scientific second opinions
• Mamas A. Mamas, MD – Great cardiology perspectives with a UK lean
• Martha Gulati, MD – Informed insights into preventative and women’s cardiology
• Michael Albert, MD – Solid perspectives on obesity care and treatments
• Purvi Parwani, MD – The person to follow for echo
• Sam Ghali, MD – Excellent lessons from the ED
• Shelley Zieroth, MD – A great source for “heart success”
• Sunil V. Rao, MD – Our first stop for interventional cardiology

The Best Healthcare Newsletters and Sites

It can be pretty comfy inside the cardiovascular news bubble, but cardiology is just one part of healthcare. That’s what makes these newsletters and websites from outside the cardiology department so important.

• Digital Health Wire (of course)
• The Imaging Wire (of course)
• Out of Pocket Health
• Second Opinion
• Rock Health
• Health API Guy
• Kaiser Family Foundation
• Hospitalogy
• Axios Vitals
• Healthcare Dive
• Heath Tech Nerds
• Stat News
• Axios Vitals

The Takeaway

If you want to stay informed about cardiology news and know what’s going on across healthcare, these sources will give you everything you need. You can also join over 12k cardiology lifers and sign up for Cardiac Wire.

PS – If there’s any cardiology publications or people that should be on this list, let me know!

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The Wire

• Solving the Rural Cardiologist Shortage: University of Iowa researchers might have figured out how to solve America’s rural cardiologist shortage: pay them to drive to rural clinics. Noting that Iowa has just 200 practicing cardiologists who mostly work in urban areas, the study found that it would cost the state $430k a year in order to maintain 2019’s level of care as more cardiologists retire. Although that might seem like a lot, “it really isn’t, compared to hiring just one cardiologist.”

• ‘Call to Action’ on Early Atherosclerosis: The PESA study of healthy adults aged 40-55 with subclinical atherosclerosis adds support for early treatment. In the study of 3,471 adults, 44% had subclinical ASCVD in baseline ultrasound exams; over six years atherosclerosis progressed among 32.7% of the participants and regressed in 8%. An accompanying JACC editorial said that the findings are a “call to action to rethink when and how aggressively clinicians intervene to prevent ASCVD.”

• A ‘Soft Positive’ Result for Dapagliflozin: After one year of treatment with dapagliflozin (Astrazeneca’s Farxiga), patients saw significant improvements in cardiometabolic outcomes but, perhaps surprisingly, saw no improvements in CV death or HF hospitalization. The DAPA-MI trial involved 4k patients with impaired heart function or Q-wave MI, given either dapagliflozin or placebo. Over a year, dapagliflozin notably reduced new diabetes cases and aided in weight loss, but showed no difference from placebo in terms of CV death and HF hospitalizations.

• HeartSciences & Mount Sinai’s ECG Alliance: HeartSciences announced a license agreement with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, allowing it to develop and commercialize a “library” of ECG AI algorithms and related assets originally developed by Icahn Mount Sinai. The alliance makes Icahn Mount Sinai a shareholder in HeartSciences, while significantly expanding HeartSciences’s ECG AI portfolio and product pipeline.

• Tafamidis in ATTR-CM Patients: New analysis of the ATTR-ACT study showed that 80 milligrams of tafamidis helped protect against declining LV systolic and diastolic function in patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy. Patients were randomized to take tafamidis meglumine (80 mg or 20 mg) or placebo for 30 months. Of the 436 patients  with 30-month echo data, the 80 mg tafamidis group saw less pronounced worsening in four of the echo measures compared to placebo. 

• Milestone’s Promising Nasal Spray: Milestone Pharmaceuticals presented promising Phase 2 study results for its etripamil Afib nasal spray. In the randomized controlled trial (n=56), etripamil reduced ventricular rate and improved symptom-relief in the first sixty minutes among patients with atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular rate (AFib-RVR) compared to placebo. A greater proportion of patients receiving etripamil achieved a ventricular rate of less than 100 bpm than those receiving placebo (58.3% vs. 4%). This study builds upon previous positive results for etripamil.

• Supira’s Breakthrough Funding: Supira Medical announced that its percutaneous ventricular assist device (pVAD) landed FDA breakthrough designation, and its completion of a $40M Series D round (total funding now >$120M). The company will use the new funding to support current and upcoming studies evaluating its developmental Supira pVAD System, which leverages a low profile and high continuous flow design to provide full hemodynamic support for high-risk PCI and cardiogenic shock patients.

• Inflammation Stronger Predictor of CV Events than LDL-C: Inflammation, measured by high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), was a stronger predictor of CV events and death than LDL-cholesterol levels in patients intolerant to statins. The analysis of the CLEAR Outcomes trial (n=14k) found that bempedoic acid reduced hsCRP by 21.6% and LDLC by 21.1% in six months, compared to a placebo. High hsCRP levels were closely linked to major CV events and mortality, whereas high LDL-C levels had a lesser impact, highlighting the importance of targeting inflammation in CVD prevention.

• Dynamic ECG Changes Help Predict SCD: A new study reported that capturing dynamic ECG remodeling improves sudden cardiac death (SCD) risk prediction compared to combining baseline ECG with clinical factors. Researchers compared people who had suffered SCD with those who hadn’t, looking at how ECG readings changed in the time leading up to the SCD event. ECG scores (a composite of 6 ECG variables) increased more in individuals who eventually suffered SCD compared to those who didn’t (+1.06 vs. -0.05), while adding dynamic ECG changes to the researchers’ models improved their SCD predictions.

• ADHD Meds’ CVD Risks: A Swedish registry study in JAMA Psychiatry could cause prescribers to re-evaluate ADHD medications. In the case control study of 278k people aged six to 64 years, ADHD drug treatment lasting from three to five years was associated with a greater risk of hypertension (72%) and arterial disease (65%). CVD risks increased by 4% with each additional year of ADHD treatment, stabilizing after three years. These results contradict a large metaanalysis that found no link between ADHD meds and adverse cardiovascular outcomes.

• New-Onset vs. Worsening HF: Among 2,858 patients who were discharged after being hospitalized for heart failure, those who had HF for the first time (de novo HF) had better outcomes compared to those with worsening chronic HF (WHF), while the use of torsemide versus furosemide led to similar outcomes. Patients with de novo HF had a significantly lower all-cause mortality at 12 months compared to those with WHF (aHR: 0.50).

Streamline Your Cardiology Imaging Workflows

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Accurate and Efficient Remote Cardiac Patient Monitoring

The expansion of remote cardiac patient monitoring is creating more care opportunities, but also new operational challenges for cardiology teams. Check out this Cardiac Wire Show, where ARTELLA Solutions’ Jacinta Fitzsimons shares how the right combination of technology and service can help physicians get the most out of their cardiac RPM programs – today and into the future.

The Resource Wire

• A Milestone Study for Cardiac Strain Analysis: Us2.ai’s deep learning algorithm was able to interpret echo AI left ventricular strain images with similar accuracy as conventional measurements. Read all about this milestone study and its implications for echo strain access in EHJ-Digital Health.

• Cleerly Transforms Personalized CVD Care: Cleerly is launching perhaps the first large-scale randomized imaging AI trial, as it seeks to prove that AI-guided cardiovascular care reduces heart attacks. The five year TRANSFORM trial will investigate whether CVD patients who receive treatments based on results from Cleerly’s investigational AI-based plaque staging system have better outcomes.

• PIA’s Post-Processing Solution: Advanced cardiac imaging often calls for a time-consuming post-processing step, requiring costly software, hardware, and training. See how PIA provides this post-processing at lower cost, improved consistency, and greater efficiency. 

• Preparing for the Future of Cardiovascular Data and Analytics: There’s plenty of short term benefits to cardiology data analytics, but it’s just as important for providers to make sure they’re ready for the future of cardiology analytics. This Change Healthcare article with Dr. Jennifer Hall, chief of data science at the American Heart Association, examines what technology leaders can do today to facilitate their future advancements in cardiovascular data and analytics.