Dear Cardiac Insider,
The latest results from the German Cardiac CT Registry study, just released at last week's European Congress of Cardiology (ESC) 2015 in London, are a success story on many levels.
With CT scanners operating at 64 detector rows and higher, and careful attention to acquisition protocols at centers across Germany, invasive exams are avoided in most chest pain patients. Coronary CT angiography and coronary artery calcium exams are acquired at very low radiation dose levels, offering long-term prognostic information as a side benefit. And many patients are living happily ever after. Get Dr. Stephan Aachenbach and colleagues' latest registry update here.
Down in Australia, however, the cardiac imaging picture is a little murkier, according to another poster presentation at ESC 2015. Doctors from the University of Tasmania in Hobart studied cardiac imaging patterns coast to coast, and they found more than a decade of rapid growth in echocardiography that had little to do with disease burden and a lot to do with the physician population. Why do Aussies get echoes? Find out here.
Concurrent with the meeting, ESC also released new guidelines on infective endocarditis, affecting everything from dental procedures to coronary interventions. Why are antibiotics still not routine? Get the story here.
Meanwhile, MRI is carving out an important and growing role for itself in cardiac care, touching everything from disease assessment and prognosis to therapeutic guidance. Untangling unknown etiologies are among cardiac MR's best weapons. Learn more about key trends in cardiac MR by clicking here.
Of course it's not all good news, particularly in interventional cardiology, where researchers went back through 30 years of patient records and determined that at least a third of the radiation delivered was unnecessary, according to large retrospective study in European Radiology. Read more here.
But acknowledging problems and addressing them is one thing, wallowing in them is quite another, as we learn in a recent talk by CT pioneer Willi Kalender, PhD. It's time to talk to patients about CT's benefits, not its minor radiation burden, remembering that the benefits are high and the risks are low, according to a story you'll find here.
Here at AuntMinnieEurope.com, we like to emphasize the benefits of keeping up to date on the latest cardiac imaging news -- all right here at the click of a mouse in your Cardiac Imaging Community. Be sure to scroll through the links below for the rest of the news in this issue.
