Topic
Heart and vascular health
How cardiovascular risk is estimated and managed, explained through the trials and guidelines behind the numbers.
This page collects every article by Dr. Damon Tojjar in this topic. For all topics see browse by topic, and for the source-anchored record see damontojjar.com/record.
Articles in this topic (15)
- How to Read ARISTOTLE: Apixaban Versus Warfarin in Atrial Fibrillation
ARISTOTLE randomized 18,201 patients with atrial fibrillation to apixaban or warfarin and found apixaban cut stroke or systemic embolism by roughly a fifth, reduced...
- Beyond the Statin: What IMPROVE-IT and FOURIER Prove About Lowering LDL Further
Two large trials answer the same question. IMPROVE-IT showed that adding ezetimibe to a statin lowered LDL cholesterol modestly and cut cardiovascular events by a...
- STRONG-HF and the Four Pillars: What the Trial Actually Reframed About Sequencing Heart-Failure Therapy
What STRONG-HF changed about the questionFor years the debate about heart-failure medicines centered on order: which foundational drug class to start first, and how...
- Heart Failure With Preserved Versus Reduced Ejection Fraction
The short answerHeart failure is not one disease. The 2022 American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and Heart Failure Society of America...
- Why How Your Blood Pressure Is Measured Changes the Diagnosis
The number depends on the methodThe same person can walk out of one room labeled hypertensive and out of another labeled normal, without anything changing in their...
- How a High-Sensitivity Troponin 0/1-Hour Rule-Out Pathway Works
The short answerA 0/1-hour rule-out pathway draws blood for high-sensitivity cardiac troponin when a person with chest pain arrives, then draws it again one hour...
- How LDL Targets Are Set in the 2026 Cholesterol Guideline
The 2026 ACC/AHA dyslipidemia guideline, published on March 13, 2026, sets low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol goals that scale with a person's estimated...
- What the LoDoCo2 Trial Says About Low-Dose Colchicine for Residual Cardiovascular Risk
LoDoCo2 randomized 5,522 patients with chronic coronary disease to daily 0.5 mg colchicine or placebo and found the drug lowered a composite of cardiovascular...
- Statin Intolerance and the Nocebo Effect: What SAMSON and the N-of-1 Trials Found
When patients who had abandoned statins because of side effects agreed to take part in blinded trials, a striking pattern emerged: most of their symptoms came back...
- TAVR vs Surgery in Low-Risk Aortic Stenosis: What the Long-Term PARTNER 3 and Evolut Data Show
Both landmark trials found transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) non-inferior to open surgery early in low-risk patients, and that verdict has largely held...
- What a Coronary Calcium Score Really Tells You
What does a coronary calcium score actually measure?A coronary artery calcium (CAC) scan is a fast CT of the heart that counts calcified plaque already sitting in...
- What BNP and NT-proBNP Tests Measure in Heart Failure
The short answerBNP and NT-proBNP do not measure heart failure. They measure cardiac wall stress, the mechanical strain the heart muscle feels when it is filling or...
- What Ejection Fraction Measures and Where It Falls Short
Ejection fraction is a ratio: the share of blood the left ventricle pushes out with each beat, expressed as a percentage. It is easy to picture, cheap to obtain,...
- Lipoprotein(a): The Inherited Risk Factor You Measure Once
Lipoprotein(a), written Lp(a) and often said aloud as "L-P-little-a," is a cholesterol-carrying particle in the blood whose concentration is roughly 90 percent or...
- What a Troponin Test Measures and Why the Word High Matters
A troponin test measures a protein that lives inside heart muscle cells and spills into the blood when those cells are injured. The word "high" has a precise...