Damian Caraballo, MD

We’re happy to share Cardiac Wire’s first-ever Guest Post, detailing enterprise imaging leader Sectra’s expansion into cardiology. Sectra’s software is at the center of some of the biggest health systems’ imaging operations, making their expansion into cardiology worth keeping tabs on if you’re looking for a true multi-ology enterprise imaging platform. Check it out!

Surgeries & Interventions

The Weekend Effect Touches TAVR Too

It seems even interventional cardiologists aren’t immune to the “Weekend Effect” as a recent study suggests patients admitted on weekends for TAVR procedures face significantly higher risks. 

• The “weekend effect” is a well-documented phenomenon in hospital care, often linked to reduced staffing levels, leading to potential delays in diagnosis and intervention.
• Weekend procedures also face limited access to specialized cardiac teams, affecting timely decisions and making urgent procedures more difficult to schedule.

To uncover the weekend effect’s impact on TAVR, researchers analyzed over 82k TAVR hospitalizations between 2013 and 2021 and revealed that weekend patients faced a 45% higher risk of in-hospital mortality compared to weekday admissions.

• Beyond in-hospital mortality, weekend patients faced a 3.27x higher risk of death following the procedures.

Patients admitted on weekends also experienced higher rates of a range of complications:

• Paravalvular leakage (0.97% vs. 0.59%) 
• Cardiogenic shock (7.59% vs. 3.97%) 
• Permanent pacemaker implantation (11.12% vs. 9.25%)
• Endocarditis (0.74% vs. 0.37%) 
• Cardiac arrest (2.19% vs. 1.65%)
• Acute kidney injury (29.76% vs. 19.56%) 
• Acute ischemic stroke (2.94% vs. 1.92%)
• Blood transfusion (13.32% vs. 9.67%) 

It appears that weekend procedures are bad for hospitals too. Weekend patients were hospitalized twice as long (8 vs. 4 days), costing hospitals almost $28,000 more per patient ($249k vs. $222.9k).

Despite these strong statistical findings, the study’s authors do warn of a few potential weaknesses due to the retrospective nature of their data.

• Researchers were not able to assess unmeasured confounding factors such as biomarker levels, socioeconomic factors, nursing care level, and medication adherence.
• The dataset only categorized admissions as “weekend” or “weekday” without specifying the day, so late Friday admissions may have been affected more than late Sunday admissions.

The Takeaway

We all love our time off, but these findings emphasize the need for improved weekend care strategies in hospitals performing TAVR – especially as the growing popularity of the procedure puts more patients at risk. 

Relieving The Burden of Post-Processing

With the advent of advanced imaging technologies like CCTA come added burdens to technologists and diagnostic imaging centers. See how PIA can relieve the burden of post-processing, saving you time while helping your bottom line.

Redefining Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Learn about the AGENT™ Drug-Coated Balloon from Boston Scientific and how this technology is expanding the treatment options for patients with in-stent restenosis in the U.S. Rx only. (Sponsored by Boston Scientific)

Automate Your Echo Reporting

It’s a good feeling when your echo report is already 83% complete before you even sit down to work on it. See how Centricity Cardio Enterprise’s echo automation features make this “good feeling” an everyday occurrence in this quick GE HealthCare demo video.

The Wire

• Sectra’s Cardiology Expansion: Sectra is a proven enterprise imaging leader, supporting some of the largest health systems’s radiology, pathology, and genomics workflows, and is now expanding into cardiology. In this exclusive Cardiac Wire profile, Sectra details its big goals for cardiology – starting with the launch of its Echo Viewer this spring – and its plans to unify ECG, Echo, Cath, Cardiac NM, Vascular, and CT FFR within a single, intuitive interface. 

• EVT Doesn’t Help Smaller Vessels: Endovascular stroke treatment (EVT) via large-vessel occlusion is known to be effective, but its benefits may stop at medium or distal vessels. A recently published NEJM study uncovered that among 543 patients, those who received EVT plus best medical care experienced slightly higher all-cause mortality (15.5%) compared to those who received only best medical care (14%). Symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage was also higher in EVT patients (5.9% vs. 2.6%).

• Eko’s PH AI: Eko Health announced the results of a study evaluating its pulmonary hypertension detection algorithm. The JAHA study used 6k heart sound recordings paired with echocardiographic pressure estimates to train the AI model, resulting in an AUROC of 0.79, a sensitivity of 71%, and a specificity of 73%. Eko’s algorithm integrates directly with the company’s smart digital stethoscopes, creating a low-cost non-invasive, point-of-care screening tool for the early PH detection.

• SAVR/CABG or PCI/TAVI? New data suggests SAVR/CABG could lead to better outcomes compared to PCI/TAVI for treating patients who need both AVR and coronary revascularization. A new data analysis of 38k Medicare beneficiaries who underwent PCI/TAVI or CABG/SAVR between 2018 and 2022 found that CABG/SAVR resulted in less major bleeding (OR: 0.72), acute kidney injury (0.25), and in-hospital mortality (0.43), but led to greater risks of pacemaker implantation (1.59) and femoral artery repair (7.1) compared to PCI/TAVI.

• Moving Beyond CT Lung Screening: Comprehensive CT chest screening could overtake lung CTs in the future thanks to broader screening benefits. A new article in the European Journal of Cancer suggests that rather than just focusing on lung cancer, chest CT could be used to screen for other chest ailments including emphysema and coronary artery calcification. These three diseases account for 44% of global premature deaths, and screening combined with new image analysis software could detect disease earlier, when it’s easier to treat.

• American vs. Danish Hospitalizations: A recent JAMA study showed that Americans are much more likely to be hospitalized for a cardiovascular event than those living in Denmark. The study compared 58M U.S. adults to 1M Danes and discovered that the age- and sex-standardized CV hospitalization rate was 20.8 per 1,000 persons in the U.S. versus 13.9 per 1,000 in Denmark. The U.S. also had a higher relative rate of HF (RR: 2.37) and MI (1.56) hospitalizations.

• Flossing Lowers Stroke Risk: Regularly flossing may significantly reduce your risk of stroke and AFib, or at least that’s what one study presented at this year’s ISC 2025 suggests. Researchers followed the dental habits of ~6k individuals and found that flossing at least once per week led to a lower risk of ischemic stroke (-22%), cardioembolic stroke (-44%), and AFib (-12%). These benefits were independent of other habits (brushing), while flossing more often appeared to lead to more significant risk reductions.

• Virtual Care Reduces Readmissions: Although data on virtual care programs has been mixed so far, a new study suggests they could help reduce hospital HF and coronary disease readmissions. The study evaluated 190 patients enrolled in Heartbeat Health’s 100-day post-discharge virtual cardiology program and found that the platform led to a 53% reduction in cardiac readmissions (8.4% vs 17.9%) and a 44% reduction in all-cause readmissions (15.8% vs 28.4%) within 90 days compared to a matched control group.

• Skip the Salt: Reducing salt intake using a reduced-sodium, added-potassium salt substitute could significantly lower the risks of stroke recurrence and death. A study out of China found that among 15k patients, the use of a salt substitute led to a 14% reduction in the risk of recurrent stroke and a 12% reduction in mortality. While reducing salt intake is already recommended for avoiding hypertension, these added stroke benefits make a case from stroke prevention as well.

• A New HFrEF Algorithm: AI models are already capable of flagging HFrEF in patient records, but a newly developed natural language processing algorithm could succeed where others have failed. Researchers used more than 13k clinical notes from the discharge summaries of over 5k patients to develop an NLP algorithm that achieved an AUROC of 0.97 for identifying patients with HFrEF and led to a net reclassification improvement of 60.2% compared to standard diagnosis codes.

• Volpara and CureMetrix’s BAC Alliance: Mammography AI leader Volpara Health (a Lunit subsidiary) partnered with CureMetrix to give its users access to CureMetrix’s cmAngio software for analyzing breast arterial calcifications in mammograms, and identifying women with greater cardiovascular disease risks. This alliance turns mammograms into a two-for-one test for both breast cancer and heart disease with cmAngio currently available to both Volpara and Lunit’s long list of mammography customers.

The All in One Cardiac Imaging Solution

Ready for an all-in-one solution that supports all of your MR and CT needs? See how Circle Cardiovascular Imaging’s cvi42 can streamline your core reading and reporting workflows within a single, customizable platform.

Merge Still Best in KLAS

Merge Cardio and Merge Hemo continued their KLAS hot streak, ranking Best in KLAS 2025 for Cardiology and Hemodynamics for the 10th and 13th years. Discover the user enhancements and software improvements that led to Merge Cardio and Merge Hemo’s latest wins.

Experience the Future of Learning: Medtronic Academy 2.0 is Here!

Unlock your ultimate destination for structural heart medical education with the newly redesigned Medtronic Academy 2.0. Gain access to expert-led courses, webinars, and a wealth of resources to stay ahead in cardiovascular care. Visit now!

The Resource Wire

• Vista.ai’s Cardiac MRI Results: Are your patients waiting too long for cardiac MRIs? See Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s real-world results showing how Vista.ai’s AI-driven image acquisition software improves image quality, shortens scan times, and increases patient throughput.

• Explore Vitrea Advanced Visualization: Discover Canon Medical Healthcare IT’s suite of advanced imaging workflows designed to increase efficiency in cardiovascular imaging, and facilitate the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. These cutting-edge tools support the delivery of faster, more accurate care while integrating seamlessly into clinical workflow

• A Better Way to Coordinate Post-Stroke Care: Think your EHR messaging system might be holding back your post-stroke care? See how UC San Diego Medical Center streamlined its neuro and EP teams’ post-stroke workflow with Viz Connect, and the impact it had on cardiac monitor placements in inpatient and outpatient settings.

• Cardiology AI: From Research to Clinical Practice: Explore how AI algorithms are reshaping cardiology with insights from Tempus’ recent webinar, featuring Dr. David Ouyang of UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, alongside Tempus’ Dr. John Pfeifer and Dr. Brandon Fornwalt. This expert panel dives into how AI can bridge diagnostic gaps, enhance patient outcomes, and streamline workflows for conditions like AFib and pulmonary hypertension. Read the full recap to glimpse the future of AI-driven cardiology.

• Connecting the ECG Monitoring Ecosystem: There’s so much that goes into building the solutions that providers use each week, and that’s definitely true for ECG monitoring. In this Cardiac Wire Show interview with Flipside Media’s president Brad Ummer, we get an insider’s view of what it takes to develop an ECG monitoring solution, including Flipside’s partnership with Monebo Technologies.

• Physician Perspectives on HeartFlow: Physicians worldwide are using the HeartFlow Analysis to help diagnose suspected coronary artery disease. Explore their perspectives on adopting HeartFlow’s technologies today.

• Making Cardiovascular Data Work for You: Today, cloud-native analytics can automate data acquisition and synthesize complex data. Discover what Optum’s technology can do to facilitate future advancements in cardiovascular data and analytics.

• Transforming Ischemia Detection: CCTA AI is poised to transform ischemia detection, leading to far greater diagnostic efficiencies and far fewer unnecessary invasive procedures. See how ischemia’s AI transformation is unfolding in this Cardiac Wire Show interview with Cleerly’s chief medical officer James Earls, MD.

• AI Analysis of ATTR-CM: ATTR-CM is a progressive and fatal cardiomyopathy with a rising number of diagnoses and a highly variable clinical course. See how Us2.ai’s fully automated machine learning algorithm analyzes echocardiographic DICOM images

The Industry Wire

1. HHS report slams private equity hospital ownership.
2. CMS says it is collaborating with Elon Musk’s DOGE. 
3. Employers, insurers want bill curbing PBMs revived.
4. Super Bowl fans tell their emergency room stories. 
5. New Orleans nurses to be on strike during Super Bowl.
6. How did hospitals prepare for Hurricane Helene?
7. BD to divest life sciences division for $30B.
8. Marijuana dependence linked to higher death risk.
9. What will be AI’s business impact on health systems? 
10. Man on free cruise gets $47k bill for flu care.