“Preventive Cardiology: Companion to Braunwald’s Heart Disease is geared to cardiologists, primary care physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and anyone else who’s interested learning more about how to prevent heart attacks and strokes.” – Roger Blumenthal, MD
Preventive Cardiology: Companion to Braunwald’s Heart Disease is geared to cardiologists, primary care physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and anyone else who’s interested learning more about how to prevent heart attacks and strokes. We designed it in an ABC format inspired by the late Michael Jackson of the Jackson Five, as in “ABC. Easy as 123.” In this format, A stands for Assessment of risk, Anti-platelet therapy, Aspirin. B is for Blood pressure and Beta blockers. C is for Cholesterol management and Cigarette smoking cessation. D is for Diet and weight, and Diabetes prevention and management. E is for Exercise and other lifestyle indications of management. F is for Follow-up. We worked hard to design this book so that both educated lay people as well as clinicians in the medical field could learn about the latest advances in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
One of the unique aspects of our textbook is that we have chapters for epidemiologists, basic scientists, geneticists, as well as clinical researchers. We tried very hard to cover the wide depth and breadth of prevention of cardiovascular disease. For example, we examine the cost-effectiveness issues. Clearly lifestyle modification is the cornerstone of preventive cardiology. There are a lot of controversies going on now in the medical literature. There are several prominent individuals who don’t believe in prevention therapy for asymptomatic people. They want to wait until someone has had a fatal heart attack or stroke. We’ve tried to convince them that treatment doesn’t work when someone has already died of a heart attack or stroke and it is too late when one has had a major heart attack resulting in heart failure.
My late father, Dr. Stanley Blumenthal, was a pediatrician, and from him I developed an interest in science and sports. I went to medical school wanting to be the team physician for the Washington Redskins. In medical school at Cornell I did two months of electives at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where I worked with the team physician for the New York Giants. I didn’t like assisting in long operations repairing old people’s broken hips. I did like the sports medicine aspects of that elective, though. I decided that by going into internal medicine, I could still be involved with sports medicine since athletes sometimes need to address cardiac issues. Plus, some of my most dynamic role models were cardiologists.
Roger Blumenthal, MD is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and the Director of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Preventive Cardiology Center. He is co-editor-in-chief of Preventive Cardiology: Companion to Braunwald’s Heart Disease.
Dr. Blumenthal is a member of the Official National Spokesperson Panel for the American Heart Association and served as Chair of the American College of Cardiology’s Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease committee for four years. He serves on the editorial boards of several international publications including Cardiology Today, Clinical Cardiology, and the American Heart Journal.
Related Authors: JoAnne Foody, MD, FACC, FAHA; Nathan D. Wong, PhD, FACC, FAHA; Eugene Braunwald, MD
