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Intensive BP Lowering, Medtronic + DASI, and Docs Leaving Medicare
October 23, 2025
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Together with
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“It’s a tool that provides precision data — and that precision gives both patient and provider a gain in time. You’re able to essentially see into the future.”
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Dr. Marc Atzenhoefer, MD on the CardioMEMs device.
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Intensive blood pressure lowering might enhance patient wellbeing, after the deeper analysis of the ESPRIT trial demonstrated that lowering systolic BP to <120 mmHg leads to modest but significant improvements in health-related quality of life.
- Intensive BP-lowering treatment targeting has proven CV benefits, but many worry that aggressive targets might lead to excessive medical burden and adverse events.
- Previous trials (ACCORD, SPRINT) found no significant QoL differences between intensive and standard treatment, but lacked follow-up duration alongside high missing data rates.
- BP related quality of life is often measured using the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire which evaluates mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression.
To fill in these gaps, the ESPRIT QoL analysis examined 5.4k intensive treatment and 5.4k standard treatment participants over a 3.4-year follow-up, using the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire to evaluate the differences between patient QoL and found that…
- EQ-5D scores increased by 0.56 points with intensive treatment versus decreased by 0.50 points with standard treatment, suggesting better QoL for the intensive group.
- Intensive treatment led to a 16% higher likelihood of meaningful improvement, while standard treatment led to worsening quality of life.
- No significant differences were found across the five EQ-5D domains between treatment groups.
Considering the widespread clinical hesitation about intensive BP targets due to quality-of-life concerns, these findings provide real world patient-centered evidence supporting more aggressive treatment in high-risk hypertensive populations.
- For example, the study’s robust sample size (>10,000 participants) provides the evidence previously lacking from earlier trials that faced limited follow-up and completeness.
- Moreover, patient-reported outcomes increasingly drive treatment decisions, making this QoL data essential for decision-making about BP targets.
The Takeaway
The results of ESPRIT’s quality-of-life analysis could help dispel concerns that intensive blood pressure control impairs patient wellbeing through excessive treatment burden. On the contrary, it appears that intensive treatment actually improves health-related quality of life while reducing cardiovascular events.
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Heartflow Roadmap Analysis For Efficient Care
As Coronary CT scan volumes increase, your entire reading team needs to deliver efficient and consistent reads. Good thing Heartflow’s Roadmap Analysis can help you maintain accuracy and increase CCTA read speeds by up to 25%, with even level 3 readers seeing real efficiency benefits.
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- Are Doctors Really Leaving Medicare? A new study in JAMA countered the notion that physicians are fleeing the Medicare program on a widespread basis, but it did discover disturbing trends in doctor departures. Overall, from 2013 to 2023 researchers found that the number of physicians participating in Medicare grew 6.3%, but doctors who did leave were more likely to be female, older, or working in primary care. Exits were also more common among physicians working in nonmetropolitan counties and in areas designated as having healthcare personnel shortages.
- Cardio Diagnostics’ Expanding Partnerships: Cardio Diagnostics partnered with 15 new healthcare providers across the United States, expanding adoption of its AI-driven blood tests, Epi+Gen CHD and PrecisionCHD, for coronary heart disease detection and management. The providers span concierge medicine, functional medicine, and direct primary care practices across the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West regions. These partnerships are likely due to growing recognition of the company’s precision cardiovascular approach that combines epigenetics, genetics, and AI to assess heart attack risk.
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- FDA Fixes Fenofibrate Label: The FDA updated fenofibrate labeling to clarify that these cholesterol medications provide no proven cardiovascular benefits, responding to a 2024 petition from HealthyWomen. The decision references the PROMINENT trial showing pemafibrate didn’t reduce cardiovascular risk and was linked to increased venous thromboembolism. Following its decision, the FDA also denied HealthyWomen’s request for special communications to providers and patients, stating it has already taken multiple actions to inform the public, making awareness of these labeling changes particularly important.
- GE’s Carevance Earns CE Mark: GE HealthCare received CE mark approval for its Carevance patient monitor, launching initially in Europe. Carevance offers full patient vital monitoring and features a new Cardiac Output Insights capability for real-time hemodynamic readouts without additional hardware or invasive catheters, while using proprietary algorithms to reduce false ECG alarms by up to 92%.
- Medtronic + DASI for TAVR: Medtronic and DASI Simulations partnered to enhance TAVR outcomes in the U.S. through AI-driven predictive modeling and digital twin technology. The collaboration aims to improve pre-procedural planning and optimize long-term patient management by using DASI’s FDA-cleared platform to analyze patient CT anatomies and retrospective outcomes. This allows physicians to simulate valve deployment scenarios while providing device-agnostic insights for personalized treatment decisions.
- SpectraWAVE X1’s FDA Clearance: SpectraWAVE received FDA 510(k) clearance for its X1-FFR product, a wire-free, drug-free fractional flow reserve system that derives physiology results from a single angiogram via real-time feed. X1 features AI-enabled automated vessel segmentation and frame suggestion integrated with the HyperVue Imaging System, creating the first platform combining FDA-cleared angiogram-derived physiology with intravascular imaging. This marks SpectraWAVE’s fifth FDA clearance in two years, addressing approximately 2.5M annual diagnostic angiograms and one million PCIs performed in U.S. cath labs.
- OhioHealth Wrongful Death Lawsuit: A judge filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OhioHealth following her husband’s October 2024 death at age 49. The suit alleges that a physician at OhioHealth ignored multiple warning signs, including chest pain, ischemic EKG results, family history, and escalating symptoms. Despite worsening conditions, the physician allegedly never referred her husband to a cardiologist or emergency room. Her husband eventually collapsed on a treadmill and died; autopsy ultimately revealed severe coronary blockages.
- Tapering Off Rilonacept is Better: A Cleveland Clinic study suggests gradually tapering patients off of rilonacept reduces pericarditis recurrence risk compared to abrupt discontinuation. The study evaluated rilonacept discontinuation strategies in 53 recurrent pericarditis patients treated for at least 12 months and found that those who abruptly stopped rilonacept experienced 82% recurrence rates versus 37% in those who gradually tapered (weekly to bimonthly to monthly then cessation). Using colchicine also delayed recurrence by approximately 60 weeks and most patients (80%) resumed rilonacept after recurrence.
- Where You Measure BP Doesn’t Matter: Waiting room blood pressure measurements could be just as good as in-office measurements, eliminating the need for dedicated examination spaces. In a cross-sectional study of 548 participants, researchers compared three BP measurement methods against daytime ambulatory monitoring and found that automatic office blood pressure measurement (AOBPM) in waiting rooms and isolated rooms both outperformed standard office measurements in diagnosing hypertension, correctly classifying 73% and 75% of patients respectively versus 62% for standard methods.
- HeartLung’s AHA Achievement: HeartLung Technologies achieved a record nine peer-reviewed studies accepted for presentation at the 2025 AHA Scientific Sessions, the most ever by any company in the conference’s history. The presentations will showcase the company’s AI-CVD platform, including AI-CAC and CT-derived cardiometabolic biomarkers with prediction capabilities for coronary soft plaques, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, COPD, and aortic disease.
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GLS Analysis of Us2.ai’s Fully-Automated Software
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A Solution for Your Entire Cardiology Service Line
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Explore Vitrea Advanced Visualization
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- Siemens Healthineers ACUSON Origin Ultrasound System is Redefining CVUS: ACUSON Origin meets the demands of today’s cardiovascular care with AI-powered efficiency across adult and pediatric echo, vascular, structural heart, and EP. Streamlined workflows, intuitive walk-up usability, and advanced ergonomics empower clinicians to deliver confident, high-quality care—supporting a wide range of complex cases and clinical applications.
- CMR Access Is Broken—Here’s How to Fix It: Cardiac MRI is one of the most powerful tools for diagnosing heart disease, yet it’s still out of reach for many patients. Download Vista AI’s new infographic to see what’s holding CMR adoption back—and how AI and automation can help make gold-standard imaging more accessible than ever.
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- Why Competitors Benchmark Against Monebo’s ECG Algorithm: In the world of cardiac monitoring, it’s a big deal when your competitors use your technology as their benchmark for success. Learn why Monebo Technologies’ ECG analysis algorithm has been the “predicate device” of at least 13 other companies FDA 510(k) clearance regulatory filings and what this means for providers and their patients.
- Identify and Treat Cardiovascular Disease: Complex care pathways make getting patients to the next step a challenge. See how Tempus Next, an AI enabled care pathway platform, helps providers identify and reduce under treatment in cardiovascular disease by adding an intelligent layer onto their routinely generated EHR data.
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