Cardiologist | Clinical Investigator | Director
@SmithBIDMC
| Section Chief, Interventional Cardiology
@BIDMCHealth
| Professor of Medicine, Harvard Med
It can be difficult to discern high quality observational studies from the rest. But it is critical that we try.
Sharing some of the things I've learned here:
Bringing the Credibility Revolution to Observational Research in Cardiology | Circulation
BREAKING NEWS!!!
In the first ever randomized clinical trial, we demonstrated that parachutes did NOT prevent death or major injury compared to control in individuals jumping from aircraft.
Published today in
@bmj_latest
:
#PARACHUTETrial
#XmasBMJ
KFC has announced that it will be testing a new combination of fried chicken and glazed doughnuts. The new items will be sold for a limited time, and aren't nationally available just yet: only in Pittsburgh and two Virginia cities — Norfolk and Richmond.
Sorrry for the unkind take but if you are dabbling in clinical research by publishing flawed observational studies, you are doing no favors for people devoting their careers to doing observational studies the right way. It hurts the credibility of the whole field.
Astonishing results from the DanGer Shock Trial presented at
#ACC24
and out in
@NEJM
today.
In patients with ST-elevation MI with cardiogenic shock, Impella reduced all-cause mortality (45.8% Impella vs. 58.5% control) at 180 days.
Some thoughts on this ground breaking trial:
1/Lot's of angst about
#ISCHEMIA
and what it will mean for cardiology practice. For me, a positive trial is likely to mean more for changing my practice than a negative one. I'll try to explain (Thread).
#AHA19
I am seriously amazed by the number of different sizes and styles of envelopes that the AMA uses to try to coerce me to pay membership dues.
Their stationary budget must be astronomical.
More stunning results published in NEJM. ISAR REACT 5. Prasugrel vs ticagrelor for ACS:
Prasugrel reduces death/MI/stroke at 1 year. No difference in bleeding. Wow.
#ESCcongress2019
Strange mix of emotions:
- Helplessness/guilt watching NYC (and friends) struggle
- Grateful to feel safe with family at the moment
- Frustrated by the mundane but real challenges of pseudo-homeschooling kids
- Terrified/energized, as the prospect of getting redeployed looms.
PCI is effective at reducing angina when the target coronary lesion is responsible for angina. Sounds obvious, but bears repeating because of the implications:
This is a DIAGNOSTIC problem, not a therapeutic one. We don't have a perfect test linking symptoms to disease.
Congratulations
@rkwadhera
for your promotion to Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School!!!
You've made incredible contributions to the fields of health policy evaluation and health equity research, to the mentorship of so many trainees, and to
@SmithBIDMC
.
We are all accommodating to this new world of virtual education during the pandemic.
Here’s our dad, preparing to teach an engineering class he’s been teaching for >50 years(!) at
@UCLA
, but doing it remotely on a tablet for the first time!
@michaelyehmd
Interventional cardiology version:
1) “Groin might be faster”
2) “Gonna confirm with a distal injection”
3) “JR4. I’ll just pull a guideliner if I need it.”
4) “Nah, we’re done. Stent looks good enuf on angio.”
5) “We can just post-dil super high if it doesn’t expand.”
…
First thoughts on
#COAPT
- a blow out. MitraClip won across the board. It wasn’t close
- very meticulously conducted, including very carefully selected population
- effectiveness in real world will hinge on how closely docs can replicate enrolled pt group
#TCT2018
Going to embarrass
@EricSecemskyMD
here, but this is too good not to share.
His NHLBI K23 was officially awarded today.
Quickly becoming THE PAD triple threat.
@SmithBIDMC
@BidmcCvi
"As a child, I promised my mother I would win the Nobel Prize in Physics. 50 years later, I said to my mother, 'See, I have kept my promise. I won the Nobel Prize.' 'No,' said my mother, 'You promised it would be in physics!'"
- Kenzaburo Oe, awarded the 1994 Literature Prize
1/
#COVID19
took the life of a great man today. Former Stanford President, and former FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy.
This thread is a personal one though, as Don was profoundly influential in my career.
via
@Stanford
Lots of question from friends & family that start with:
“Is it too paranoid to....”
“Am I overreacting if I...”
Cancel the party, don’t go to the movie, skip that flight, don’t let my kid go to the sleepover.
Feels like the right answer universally has been, “No.”
#Covid_19
I’m stunned by how positive the
#COMPLETE
trial is. Complete revasc wins definitively over culprit only revasc on the difficult to game death/MI endpoint. Want to dig into the MI definition a bit, but looks like a practice changer.
#ESCcongress2019
#MASTERDAPT
is out in
@NEJM
, short vs standard DAPT in high bleeding risk patients. Will be the most important DAPT Study we see this year. Much respect for the authors. Here’s are some quick thoughts (thread):
- high risk patients (1/3 NSTEMI, 11% STEMI, complex long lesions)
It's notable that the rapid erosion of equipoise in experimental treatments for
#COVID19
is driven principally by doctors doing what they think is best in desperate circumstances, to a lesser degree by biological plausibility, and not at all by financial conflict of interest.
Could hear a loud lecture coming from
@EricSecemskyMD
‘s office. Wanted to check out what it was.
Grand rounds talk?
FDA meeting?
Vascular conference presentation?
Nope.
Teaching his 1st grader’s class about Hanukkah.
(Sound on)
@SmithBIDMC
Not a joke - I was asked by a reviewer to separately present the results of a study limited to Caucasian subjects.
The entire study population was 91% Caucasian.
Because what’s really missing in the clinical trial literature are white people subgroup analyses.
That sound you heard from
#ESCCongress
was the collective sigh of relief from all interventionalists who take call and their spouses.
Immediate Angiography after Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest without ST-Segment Elevation did not show benefit.
“The clues in their name”? Cmon...
I’m saddened by how acceptable it has become to disparage an entire profession.
ICs are your med student classmates, your co-fellows, your colleagues you consult every day.
We, like you, are doing the best we can for our shared patients.
Good example of “immortal time bias”. Complete revasc within 60 days of STEMI means you must have lived long enough to receive it.
STEMI pts who eat a bag of Cheetos within 60 days also have lower mortality than those who don’t, it turns out.
Genuine thanks to all of my Twitter friends for the kind congratulatory messages. Truly appreciative of mentors and friends.
Now get back to the scientific quibbling that makes this such a fun platform!
In the first US trial evaluating a drug-coated balloon for coronary in-stent restenosis, we found that the Agent paclitaxel balloon reduced target lesion failure by > 40% compared with conventional angioplasty.
Now FDA approved.
Published in JAMA now:
Maybe an unpopular take:
Academics docs like to create classification systems for diseases and syndromes.
Unless they clearly distinguish distinct biological processes with different treatments, their main use is to create material for trainees to memorize and be tested on.
Just finishing the usual morning ritual.
“Kind Sir...” - Delete
“Esteemed Colleague...” - Delete
“Dear Dr. Robert W. Yeh...” - Delete
“Greeting from Journal of...” - Delete
On to the rest of my day.
All the focus on whether revascularization “works” misses the mark.
If someone creates a test that can better attribute symptoms to lesions, we’ll do a lot better.
Our primary challenge in stable CAD is a DIAGNOSTIC problem, not a therapeutic one.
#AHA19
#ISCHEMIA
10/So if you're an evidence-based patient-centered interventional cardiologist, I personally think you can rest comfortably whatever the results of the trial show. I'm trying to go in with an open mind and no agenda.
It's the spin cycle that I'm more worried about.... end.
Big congrats to my good friend
@EricSecemskyMD
for his promotion to Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School!!
The promotions committee was particularly impressed by this keynote lecture delivered to a panel of luminaries! (Sound on)
@SmithBIDMC
If I ever say "I found" or "My paper" to describe a study for which I am not the sole author, please free free to punch me, especially if you are a co-author.
If you ever thought you might share a paper you were asked to review before it was public and thought, “what could go wrong?”
Today’s
@NEJM
hydroxychloroquine debacle is the answer.
Find me a device or treatment that docs selectively use in sick patients, and I'll find you an observational study showing that its use is associated with worse outcomes.
If you like thinking about confidence intervals and uncertainty, this visualization is really incredible.
Interpreting Confidence intervals from
@krstoffr
. H/t
@statsepi
Big congrats to
@EricSecemskyMD
for his promotion to Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, just 9 months into his first year on faculty!
The triple threat of vascular intervention.
Cc:
@SmithBIDMC
@kardiologykazi
It is amazing how little it takes to erode perceived equipoise.
If we can’t randomize treatment for a disease that was unknown 4 months ago and for which the only treatments available are designed and approved for other diseases, RCTs don’t have much hope at all.
It’s a shame that the takeaway is often “I can’t trust any observational study.” Painting every study with the same brush isn’t right either.
But with so many deeply confounded study coming out week after week, who can blame people for having that response?
The belittling, bullying and name calling of
@LisaRosenbaum17
by those she somehow offended by her most recent article is incredibly disappointing to see.
Is this really how you talk to people you disagree with??? Or does the digital medium erode your decency?
#whentheygolow
Great news for present and future
@BIDMCVFellows
!
@AM_AnagnosMD
was appointed the Director of Recruitment and Advancement of Women Fellows in Cardiology Training.
And
@rkwadhera
named the Associate Program Director for the fellowship.
Great things to come!!
I’m no germophobe, but the last thing I want to do on my way out of a public restroom is to put my hands on a touch screen that thousands of people who’ve just done their business have touched right before me.
If we reframe angina as a diagnostic issue rather than a therapeutic one, we'd stop saying things like "PCI is modestly effective." It's really effective, in the right patient.
We'd instead say, "we are modestly good at knowing the etiology of your angina."
Due to
@CDC
,
@WHO
#COVID19
reports, and in the best interest of our attendees and the
#CVD
patients whom they serve around the globe,
#ACC20
/
#WCCardio
is canceled. Virtual meeting options in the works. More here:
Wonderful evening honoring Dr. Igor Palacios
@MGHHeartHealth
. Enormous outpouring of love and respect for one of the fathers of interventional and structural heart intervention.
So great to see so many of his former trainees - an incredible legacy.
Very true. When I disagree with 90% of what you are saying, it’s very hard to publicly endorse the 10% I agree with.
But mutual recognition of the common ground is the first step toward progress.
Great study by David Manly,
@SVRaoMD
and team on transradial cath and PCI in patients with prior CABG in
@JACCJournals
CV Interventions.
For radial:
- a bit more time/fluoro on the diagnostic
- highly feasible for PCI
- better outcomes
I’ve been pronouncing dabigatran wrong the whole time, and I’ll but you’ve been too.
Amazingly funny article on how we name generic drugs.
H/t
@hswapnil
I think this definitely proves that I am a child of the 80s and also have terrible taste but
#CobraKai
is the most compelling TV I’ve watched since Ben H’s season of the Bachelor.
Tremendously excited for this announcement.
@LisaRosenbaum17
is one of the most important voices in our profession today.
She'll lead a new effort at
@SmithBIDMC
to advance writing and critical thinking in medicine.
Welcome Lisa!
We are pleased to announce that
@LisaRosenbaum17
will join
@SmithBIDMC
as the inaugural Writer-In-Residence, beginning July 2024. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Rosenbaum!
PSA:
If your patient has been in the MICU for any reason, there are few good reasons to send them for coronary angiography during the same hospitalization.
There are many good reasons not to.
Some meandering thoughts about
#CardioTwitter
in
@CircOutcomes
:
- Is it inherently democratic?
- Are there risks to community building?
- What’s industry’s role in all this?
- Who will be the arbiter’s of truth?
As always, interested in your thoughts.
Exciting to work with the
@US_FDA
to provide a safety evaluation of endovascular grafts for abdominal aortic aneurysms for the FDA Advisory Panel meeting today.
Complete team effort for the
@SmithBIDMC
team, quarterbacked by
@EricSecemskyMD
. I'll take credit for the camera work.
This is important. Our individual risk is not the primary reason for social distancing, hand washing etc.
The sum total of our Individual decisions have implications for everyone. If you’re primarily thinking about your personal risk, you’re thinking about this the wrong way.