Publications by authors named "Donna M Polk"
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed unprecedented changes to medical education, including CV fellowship programs. CV fellowship PDs offer a unique perspective regarding the impact of the pandemic on CV medical education.
Objectives: The 4th annual Cardiovascular Diseases (CV) Fellowship Program Directors (PDs) Survey sought to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on CV fellows and fellowship programs.
Impact of coronary artery calcium testing on patient management.
J Cardiovasc Comput Tomogr
July 2022
Article Synopsis
- Coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring helps identify patients who might benefit from more aggressive treatments, but recent data on its influence on patient management is limited.
- A study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 2015 to 2019 analyzed 839 patients to see how CAC testing affected medications and lifestyle changes.
- Results showed that higher CAC scores led to increased prescriptions for aspirin, anti-hypertensives, and lipid-lowering therapy, especially for patients with significant calcification (CAC≥100), while more intense lifestyle recommendations were also correlated with higher scores.
Importance: Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with poor health outcomes. However, whether socioeconomic factors are associated with post-myocardial infarction (MI) outcomes in younger patient populations is unknown.
Objective: To evaluate the association of neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage with long-term outcomes among patients who experienced an MI at a young age.
Background The lack of diversity in the cardiovascular physician workforce is thought to be an important driver of racial and sex disparities in cardiac care. Cardiology fellowship program directors play a critical role in shaping the cardiology workforce. Methods and Results To assess program directors' perceptions about diversity and barriers to enhancing diversity, the authors conducted a survey of 513 fellowship program directors or associate directors from 193 unique adult cardiology fellowship training programs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We sought to determine the prevalence of diabetes and associated cardiovascular outcomes in a contemporary cohort of young individuals presenting with their first myocardial infarction (MI) at age ≤50 years.
Research Design And Methods: We retrospectively analyzed records of patients presenting with a first type 1 MI at age ≤50 years from 2000 to 2016. Diabetes was defined as a hemoglobin A ≥6.
Background: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has not been used to assess the effects of statins on the brain. We assessed the effect of statins on cognition using standard neuropsychological assessments and brain neural activation with fMRI on two tasks.
Methods: Healthy statin-naïve men and women (48±15 years) were randomized to 80 mg/day atorvastatin (n=66; 27 men) or placebo (n=84; 48 men) for 6 months.
Background: Several publications and guidelines designate diabetes mellitus (DM) as a coronary artery disease (CAD) risk equivalent. The aim of this investigation was to examine DM cardiac risk equivalence from the perspective of stress SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI).
Methods And Results: We examined cardiovascular outcomes (cardiac death or nonfatal MI) of 17,499 patients referred for stress SPECT-MPI.
Objective. To investigate vascular endothelial function (VEF) responses to a single low-density lipoprotein (LDL) apheresis session in hypercholesterolemic patients undergoing chronic treatment. Methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The study objective was to assess the burden of major cardiovascular disease (CVD) behavioral risk factors (BRFs) (i.e., smoking, excess body weight, physical inactivity, risky alcohol consumption) among individuals in the community with and without CVD history.
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