News and views

Heart failure: a practical guide for diagnosis and management...

The Cardiomyopathy Association is calling for healthcare professionals to take part in a survey, as part of its drive to improve awareness and symptom recognition of this condition. ...

Hola Madrid! More than 1,800 clinicians and scientists from 75 countries converged on Madrid, Spain, for the 52nd annual congress of the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS), held 31 May–3 June at the Institución Ferial de Madrid. At the opening ceremony EAS President, Professor Alberico Catapano (University of Milan and Multimedica IRCCS, Italy) emphasised that 2014 marks the start of an exciting time in lipid research, with ongoing studies evaluating different approaches to managing patients at high cardiovascular risk, as well as exciting new discoveries in basic research leading to a better understanding of atherosclerotic diseases....

Congratulations to the winners of our prize draw, Ms Hannah Manos (Culm Valley Integrated Centre for Health) and Professor John Somauroo (Countess of Chester NHS Trust), who can each claim a portable heart monitor for their practice. They have both opted to switch from print to receiving their BJC digitally, and were the lucky winners of an AliveCor portable heart monitor in our draw. ...

The European Stroke Conference meeting was held in Nice, France, from May 6th–9th 2014. It was a busy programme with over 1,500 abstracts presented, as well as educational programmes presented alongside the scientific and clinical content. Dr Paul Guyler, Consultant Stroke Physician, Southend University Hospital, NHS Trust reports on some of the highlights....

The article on pages 47–8, by Drs Derek Rowlands and Philip Moore, highlights the importance of maintaining our clinical skills at electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation. The authors touch upon the unsatisfactory reliance on computer analyses. The frequent inaccuracy of computer-generated ECG interpretation is well recognised, yet how many of us in primary care, still fall back on this? The machine diagnostics can so easily mislead us. Always check it yourself, and consider your findings in conjunction with the clinical presentation. Today, we’re doing a confidence test …...

We continue our series in which Consultant Interventionist Dr Michael Norell takes a sideways look at life in the cath lab…and beyond. In this column, he considers how we manage the often dreaded outpatients’ clinics....

News in brief from the world of cardiology...

Correspondence from the world of cardiology...

Correspondence from the world of cardiology...