By: James Pitt  Nov. 16, 2018

Open enrollment is from November 1 to December 15. If you don't already have health insurance for next year lined up, the best time to enroll is right now. Many plans are available at good values. If you forget to get health insurance, you may need to pay a tax penalty.

By: James Pitt  Oct. 22, 2018

In goal-directed fluid therapy (GDT or GDFT), physicians use hemodynamic variables such as stroke volume (the amount of fluid the heart moves with each beat) to estimate the amount of fluid in circulation. Physicians provide fluid as needed to keep these hemodynamics variables near target values.

By: James Pitt  Oct. 15, 2018

Heart valve replacement is a competitive field, with many competing options. A recently developed category is rapid deployment valves, which do not require suturing. This allows for much faster implantation. Payors class these valves as experimental, under ICD-10 procedure codes like X2RF032 for open-approach implantation, rather than under the ICD-10 codes like 02RF08Z that conventional heart valves are assigned.

By: James Pitt  Oct. 08, 2018

Atrial fibrillation, the most common arrhythmia, is a condition in which the heart's upper chambers contract rapidly and irregularly. Twenty years ago, Haïssaguerre et. al discovered that pulmonary veins can spontaneously trigger AFib, and isolating pulmonary veins from each other with radiofrequency catheter ablation can correct it.

By: James Pitt  Sep. 06, 2018

In Dexur's national data, there were about 150,000 Percutaneous Cardiovascular Procedures With Coronary Artery Stent each year from 2013-2016 in Medicare-eligible inpatients. Stents are a diverse and fast-moving market. The most common devices are bare-metal or drug-eluting, but innovations like CeloNova's polymer-coated Cobra PzF stent may have advantages for patients at high risk of bleeding. This advantage comes indirectly, through reducing the risk of stent thrombosis.

By: James Pitt  Aug. 28, 2018

Congestive heart failure (CHF) occurs when fluid builds up around the heart and interferes with its normal activity. An extremely common diagnosis, CHF affects about 5.7 million people, and is generally treated with diuretics.

By: James Pitt  Aug. 27, 2018

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR, aka TAVI or PAVR) is a procedure to replace the valve between the largest blood vessel and the heart. In this procedure, a replacement valve is passed along through a blood vessel to the heart. This allows surgeons to replace the valve in patients who would face too many risks in open-heart surgery.

By: James Pitt  Aug. 17, 2018

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reimburses heart valve procedures based on which of six diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) they fall in. These groups are based on whether there were complications/ comorbidities (CCs) and on whether cardiac catheterization was used.

By: James Pitt  Aug. 16, 2018

When plaque builds up in the arteries that carry blood to the brain, the patient has carotid artery disease. This disease creates a great risk of stroke, because plaque can break off and cause an obstruction in vessels in the brain. Carotid artery disease is involved in 8% of ischemic strokes. Per Weber and Clair 2014, “Carotid artery disease leading to stroke is one [of] the primary causes of serious long-term disability in the United States today.”

By: James Pitt  Aug. 15, 2018

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a common condition in which narrowed blood vessels reduce blood flow to the limbs. Calcium buildups on the vessel walls frequently complicate treatment. Rocha-Singh et. al write “The prevalence of VC [vascular calcification] in lower extremity PAD is inadequately defined, but data extrapolated from other vascular beds provide evidence that 30-50% of patients may manifest some degree of VC.”