It’s American Heart Month at Relias Media

By Jonathan Springston, Editor, Relias Media

Since 1964, February has been designated American Heart Month, a time set aside for everyone to focus on the importance of heart health.

The American Medical Association is offering six tips for physicians to share with patients regarding heart health, including the need to control blood pressure, eat a healthy diet, and stay physically active. Since high blood pressure often is a reason for poor heart health, the American Heart Association is going even further, highlighting everyday habits that may raise blood pressure.

For our part, Relias Media has recently published plenty of work related to heart health and cardiology at large. In the February 15 issue of Internal Medicine Alert, check out “ECG Review,” a regularly occurring feature all about technical heart health.

In the February issue of Clinical Cardiology Alert, Physician Editor Michael Crawford, MD, writes about the value of in-ambulance troponin measurements. A recent study of triaging suspected non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome patients by employing in-ambulance troponin measurements augmented the predictive value for 45-day major adverse cardiac events. This strategy could help identify very high-risk patients who would benefit from urgent coronary angiography.

Beyond this month, Relias Media’s heart health coverage will continue. On the cover of the upcoming March issue of ED Management, author Dorothy Brooks writes about how prehospital providers play a role in regionalizing the care of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients. Recently, Investigators documented improved time to treatment results and a significant decline in mortality among patients treated at sites adopting a regionalized approach. The data come from the Regional Systems Accelerator-2 project in which key stakeholders in 12 regions pledged to work together to improve STEMI care.

The upcoming March issue of ED Legal Letter is dedicated to malpractice litigation involving STEMI. The cover story explores why plaintiff attorneys decide to pursue a “missed STEMI” case. Inside, medical-legal experts share the latest research, guidelines, and data relevant to missed STEMI liability exposure. The issue also includes information about low-risk chest pain, the commonly used HEART score, atypical symptoms, cardiology consultations, delayed ECGs, unsafe discharges, communication by triage nurses, and hospital protocols.

All of this coverage is leading up to the release of the newest version of our STEMI Watch book this spring. Be sure to check out the 2018 version here.