18 Jun
Speaker: Robert M. Califf, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina.
Baseline data from the Falsartan in cute Myocardial infarction Trial (VALIANT) demonstrated that the early use of beta blockade in patients with an acute myocardial infarction (AMI), complicated by heart failure and/or left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD), was associated with lower mortality.
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17 Jun
Speaker: David E. Allie, MD, Director of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, Cardiovascular Institute of the South, Lafayette, Louisiana.
Bivalirudin (Angiomax®, The Medicines Company), a novel direct thrombin inhibitor, has been shown to be safe and feasible as the sole anticoagulant in patients undergoing renal and iliac percutaneous peripheral interventions (PPIs) for peripheral vascular disease.
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16 Jun
Speaker: Rosario A. Mercado-Young, MD, Fellow in Cardiology, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas.
An extended-release niacin formulation (Niaspan®, Kos) has been found to be safe, well tolerated, and effective in a wide range of patients with dyslipidemia, including those with diabetes.
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15 Jun
Drug-Eluting Stents for Coronary Artery Lesions
Speaker: Antonio Colombo, MD, Professor of Medicine, EMO Centre Cuone Columbus Hospital, Milan, Italy.
A 12-month follow-up of the paclitaxel stent (Taxus™, Boston Scientific) study (TAXUS II) demonstrated that paclitaxel-elut-ing coronary stents were highly effective at one year after implantation with sustained benefits, as measured by decreased rates of major adverse coronary events (MACEs), restenosis, and revascularization. These stents performed better than the metal stents in patients who had undergone percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with stenting for de novo coronary artery lesions.
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13 Jun
Every age has its medical terrors —bubonic plague (in the 6th, 14th, and 17th centuries), smallpox (in the 16th to 18th centuries), the so-called “Spanish flu” of 1918, which actually originated in the U.S., the AIDS pandemic—and, now, smallpox again? Well, maybe not—but that might be because the national program to inoculate 500,000 health care workers, as described by Dr. Babinchak, could signal a shift in our ability to control epidemics by ensuring that they never happen. It could be the start of preventive maintenance on a grand scale. Implicit in Dr. Babinchak’s article is the notion that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (”9/11″), rather than any past or present health crisis, provided the impetus for the current smallpox vaccination campaign— even though the threat of chemical and biological weapons has been hanging over our heads for years.
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12 Jun
As I sat listening to her, my mind was searching for the right words to say. She had come seeking my advice, yet I knew it was the last thing she wanted to hear.
She was a lovely 24-year-old woman. Two years earlier, she had graduated from college. And she had to grow up in a hurry.
The summer after her college graduation, she returned home to live with her divorced mother and 16-year-old brother.
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11 Jun
Since its first appearance in the 1980s, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has affected people of all ages. Although AIDS was initially considered an acute and fatal disease, advances in medicine and AIDS-specific research have increased the life expectancy for people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and AIDS. As a result, the disease is being managed as a chronic illness and the HIV-infected population is growing older. Data from MediMedia’s Hospital Diagnosis & Therapy Audit from 1999 to 2003 show a decrease in hospitalized HIV patients younger than age 40 and an increase in all hospitalized patients older than age 40 (Figure 1).
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