By LINDSEY TANNER AP Medical Writer CHICAGO (AP) - Doctors joke that if you're going to have a heart attack, the safest place would be at a big national gathering of heart specialists. But a new study suggests some older hospitalized heart patients may fare better when these doctors aren't around. Survival chances were better for cardiac arrest patients and for the sickest heart failure patients if they were treated at teaching hospitals during the two biggest national cardiology meetings, compared with those treated during weeks before and after the meetings. Also, some of the sickest heart attack patients got fewer invasive procedures during meeting days, versus those treated at other times - but that didn't hurt their odds of surviving, the nine-year study found. The findings were only at teaching hospitals, typically affiliated with medical schools and involved in doctor training and sometimes research; these are the workplaces for many doctors who attend major medical meetings. No differences were seen in death rates at non-teaching hospitals. The evidence is only circumstantial and the study lacks information on whether the patients' own doctors actually attended the meetings. "The solution is not to get the cardiologists to have meetings every week," … Continue reading →

Gary Waters/Getty Images/Ikon Images Gary Waters/Getty Images/Ikon Images If your cardiologist is away at a conference when you're having a stabbing feeling in your chest, don't fret. You may be more likely to live. A study published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found frail patients admitted to teaching hospitals with two common types of heart problems were more likely to survive on days when national cardiology conferences were going on. The researchers also discovered that heart attack patients who were at higher risk of dying were less likely to undergo angioplasties when conferences were occurring, yet their mortality rates were the same as similar patients admitted at other times. An angioplasty, in which a doctor unblocks an artery with an inflatable balloon inserted by a small tube, is one of the most common medical procedures for cardiac patients. The conclusions about teaching hospitals surprised even the authors, who had begun their inquiry anticipating that death would be more common during cardiology meetings because hospital staffs were more short-handed than usual. Finding the opposite, the researchers speculated that for very weak patients, aggressive treatments may exceed the benefits. "There's something very specific about cardiology meetings and cardiology outcomes," said … Continue reading →

IMAGE:This image summarizes data from this study on the obesity paradox and heart failure. view more Credit: Journal of the American College of Cardiology WASHINGTON (Dec. 22, 2014) -- Patients who were obese before developing heart failure lived longer than normal weight patients with the same condition according to a new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that examined the "obesity paradox" by following obese and non-obese heart failure patients for more than a decade. Using data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, researchers looked at body mass index before the initial diagnosis of heart failure in 1,487 patients and followed them for 10 years, comparing the survival rates of obese, overweight and normal weight patients after the development of heart failure. The majority of patients included in the study were overweight (35 percent) or obese (47 percent) prior to their initial diagnosis of heart failure. During the 10 year follow-up period, 43 percent of the patients in the study group died, but the overweight and obese patients had better survival rates compared to the normal weight patients. Over the decade of follow-up, 38 percent of obese and 45 percent of overweight patients died compared … Continue reading →