Heart : official journal of the British Cardiac Society
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Editorial Comment
Is public access to surgeon-specific data affecting practice adversely?
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Editorial Comment Historical Article
The evolving story of "conditioning" to protect against acute myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion injury.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Thoracic spinal cord stimulation improves functional status and relieves symptoms in patients with refractory angina pectoris: the first placebo-controlled randomised study.
Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an alternative treatment option for refractory angina. Controlled trials demonstrate symptom relief and improvement in functional status. Since patients experience retrosternal prickling during active SCS, there is no option for blinding patients to active treatment or for placebo control. ⋯ In this first placebo-controlled trial to apply SCS in patients with refractory angina, improvement in functional status and symptoms was revealed in phases with conventional or subthreshold stimulation, in comparison to a low-output (placebo) phase.
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Multicenter Study
How effective are rapid access chest pain clinics? Prognosis of incident angina and non-cardiac chest pain in 8762 consecutive patients.
To determine whether rapid access chest pain clinics are clinically effective by comparison of coronary event rates in patients diagnosed with angina with rates in patients diagnosed with non-cardiac chest pain and the general population. ⋯ RACPCs are successful in identifying patients with incident angina who are at high coronary risk, but there is a need to reduce misdiagnosis and improve outcomes in patients diagnosed with non-cardiac chest pain who accounted for nearly one third of cardiac events during follow-up.