John, thank you for sharing. I find it frightening how hard many Cardiologists are pushing Watchmans. And it’s frightening either because of the financial incentives or because they just aren’t thinking about what they do. As a PCP, I’m not sure what to do except tell my patients not to get it (and then give them printed copies of these …
John, thank you for sharing. I find it frightening how hard many Cardiologists are pushing Watchmans. And it’s frightening either because of the financial incentives or because they just aren’t thinking about what they do. As a PCP, I’m not sure what to do except tell my patients not to get it (and then give them printed copies of these trials to share with their cardiologist. Passive aggressive, but that’s all I’ve got). The other issue is that bleeding risk are very similar between NOACs and aspirin (trials show mixed results which probably says they’re similar, but AVERROES is an example), and so right out the window goes the logic to do the procedure so someone can be on aspirin instead of a NOAC.
John, thank you for sharing. I find it frightening how hard many Cardiologists are pushing Watchmans. And it’s frightening either because of the financial incentives or because they just aren’t thinking about what they do. As a PCP, I’m not sure what to do except tell my patients not to get it (and then give them printed copies of these trials to share with their cardiologist. Passive aggressive, but that’s all I’ve got). The other issue is that bleeding risk are very similar between NOACs and aspirin (trials show mixed results which probably says they’re similar, but AVERROES is an example), and so right out the window goes the logic to do the procedure so someone can be on aspirin instead of a NOAC.