Healthcare and Medical News for Atlanta Physicians

The Emergence of Sports Cardiology

By Walter E. Mashman, M.D.*, Kathleen Turchin, BSN*, and Jonathan H. Kim, M.D.#

In 490 BC, after the Greek town of Marathon successfully defended Persian attack, the messenger Pheidippides is said to have run to Athens to deliver the news. Upon arrival, as he exclaimed “Nike!” (victory, win), Pheidippides collapsed and perished. While this legendary story represents the premise for the modern-day marathon, it can also be said to lay claim to the first ... Continue Reading

ExtraCorporal Membrane Oxygenation

by Dr. Peter Barrett  More than 40 years since it was first used in 1971, ECMO has become an integral part of treatment in the adult critical care community Extracorporal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a rapidly advancing form of mechanical circulatory support. ECMO was first used in 1971 by Dr. Robert Bartlett in the neonatal population for meconium aspiration. The evolution ... Continue Reading

The Future of Valve Therapies

By Vivek Rajagopal, MD; Meredith Brazil, PA-C; Frances Lockwood, PA-C; Morris Brown, MD; Jim Kauten, MD; Christopher Meduri, MD, MPH   The gold standard for treating valve disease for decades has been cardiac surgery, but transcatheter valve therapies have proved effective in numerous clinic trials. In particular, clinical trials have shown superior outcomes of ... Continue Reading

Regenerative Medicine

Does regenerative medicine hold the keys to rebuilding damaged organs, tissue and muscle? Atlanta Medicine recently spoke with some Atlanta area researchers about the promise regenerative medicine holds for the future of medicine. According to Arshed A. Quyyumi, M.D., a professor of medicine in Emory University School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology, stem cell therapy ... Continue Reading

Hypertension and Sexual Dysfunction: Let’s Start The Conversation

By Brittany Thomas, M.D. It has been estimated that more than 150 million men worldwide have some degree of erectile dysfunction. The prevalence of erectile dysfunction is approximately two fold higher in hypertensive patients compared to normotensive patients. Due to the private nature of this problem, erectile dysfunction is often overlooked and left to the patient to ... Continue Reading

12 Tips for Hypertension in the Athlete

By John Davis Cantwell, M.D., MACP, FACC For the past 40 years, I have been doing pre-season Atlanta Braves baseball physicals at their spring training facility in Florida. Thirty-five years ago, I began doing pre-season cardiovascular examinations on freshman Georgia Tech athletes. Usually every year there are several athletes noted to have hypertension. This is not ... Continue Reading

Sports Cardiology & Women’s Heart Health

By Jonathan Kim, M.D. Case #1: A 55-year-old female triathlete self-refers herself to your clinic complaining of exertional dyspnea on exertion. She has been a high-level recreational endurance athlete for the last 25 years, competing in 25 marathons and 8 Ironman triathlons. At baseline, she runs 40 miles per week when not training for competition. She states that for the ... Continue Reading

Clinical Trial Demonstrates High Implant Success of World’s Smallest Pacemaker

By Jennifer Johnson McEwen A study presented this week at the 2015 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the world's smallest, minimally invasive cardiac pacemaker — the Micra Transcatheter Pacing System (TPS) — was successfully implanted in nearly all of the patients participating in ... Continue Reading

Peripartum Cardiomyopathy

By David W. Markham, M.D., MSc A 29-year-old woman presents two weeks after delivery of her second child complaining of lower extremity edema and dyspnea on exertion. She had mild dyspnea at the end of her first pregnancy two years ago, but she has had an uneventful second pregnancy. She has no other medical problems. The patient has a faint third heart sound (S3) on cardiac ... Continue Reading

Gender and Ethnic Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease

By Carolina Gongora, M.D. About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year, corresponding to 1 in 4 deaths. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the No. 1 cause of death in both women and men and is highest in the South and lowest in the West. Unfortunately, half of Americans have at least one of the recognized risk factors for CVD, including ... Continue Reading

Study Shows that Survival Rates Have Improved in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrests

Researchers have determined that survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) improved in communities across the U.S. between 2005 and 2012. Improvements that impacted survival rates were noted in both pre-hospital and in-hospital care. Bystander CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and on-site automated external defibrillator (AED) use improved during the interval ... Continue Reading

A Less-Invasive Approach to Severe Aortic Stenosis

A new clinical trial at Piedmont Heart offers an alternative to open-heart surgery for patients with severe aortic stenosis, the most common and most serious type of heart valve disease in which the opening of the aortic valve is narrowed. Called the Medtronic CoreValve Surgical Replacement and Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (SURTAVI) Trial, the study compares the ... Continue Reading

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