Measurement of coronary artery calcification could improve the prediction of future coronary heart disease over standard risk factors in black, Hispanic and Chinese patients as well as in white individuals.

The small vessel damage to the retina seen in diabetic retino-pathy might represent widespread micro-circulatory dysfunction that predisposes patients to incident HF. On the basis of their findings, the authors suggest that clinicians should perform a thorough cardiac evaluation and follow-up in patients with diabetes who show signs of retinopathy.

Approximately 22% of all deaths in patients with end-stage renal disease are caused by sudden cardiac death (SCD), but it is not known whether less-severe kidney function is also associated with SCD. Deo et al. have established that moderate to severely impaired kidney function is an independent predictor of SCD in postmenopausal women with coronary heart disease.

These data indicate that after thrombolysis, immediate treatment at a PCI center is superior to standard therapy for high-risk patients with STEMI for whom PCI is not available within 90 min of admission.

Therapy with statins decreases the risk of AF in patients with a history of AF or who are at risk of postoperative or new-onset AF.

This video shows two 38-year-old Starr–Edwards artificial heart valves in a 67-year-old woman. Both valves are functioning normally, despite being well on their way to becoming antiques. The video was obtained by doctors Nicolo Piazza and Jean Grégoire at the Montreal Heart Institute in Quebec, Canada, who conducted a heart catheterization after the woman went to hospital suffering shortness of breath.

The drug maker Merck has agreed to pay $58 million as part of a multistate settlement of accusations that its ads for the once-popular painkiller Vioxx deceptively played down the health risks.

Researchers have recently found that a person's "pulse wave velocity" is closely linked to blood pressure. This is the rate at which the pulse pressure wave passes through the blood circulatory system. Sensors sewn into the waistband of a person's underpants can measure the rate of this wave, consumer electronics company Philips has discovered, and could be used to calculate blood pressure for as long as the garment is worn.

Scientists have found that the food contains up to the equivalent of a wine glass of cooking oil. One of the kebabs tested contained 140g of fat, twice the maximum daily allowance for women. Another contained 111g. Nutritionists said eating two a week could cause a heart attack within 10 years.

Doctors who treat patients with heart failure have long been puzzled by a peculiar observation. Many black patients seem to do just as well if they take a mainstay of therapy, a class of drugs called beta blockers, as if they do not. It is almost as if they were immune to the drugs. Now researchers at Washington University and the University of Maryland have discovered why: these nonresponsive patients have a slightly altered version of a gene that muscles use to control responses to nerve signals. People with this altered gene are making what amounts to their own version of beta blockers all the time. As many as 40 percent of blacks and 2 percent of whites have the gene variant, the researchers report.