Blog

Dr Chai's keeps a regular blog here on health news / research update in the field of cardiovascular and exercise medicine.

Sometimes, simultaneous blog post may appear on the PhysioQinetics blog page - which generally tailors more towards physiotherapy / sports related news.

BUPA expert coronary artery disease

BUPA expert in coronary artery disease

Major insurance company BUPA recently invited Dr Chai to review their health information page on coronary artery disease. In the era of information overload on social media and on the Internet, it is increasingly important that you have up-to-date expert health information you can trust. 
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Lipid Quantification MRI

Statins and cardiovascular risk – Part 3

In the final part of this series, we will look at the paradigm shift from vulnerable plaques to vulnerable patients and the concept of cardiovascular risk. We will discuss how to practice individualised precision medicine and how to tailor our lipid treatment strategy using a reinforced arsenal of new anti-lipid drugs.
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Atorvastatin is one of the most commonly used statins

Statins and cardiovascular risk – Part 2

In the previous episode, we discussed the fallacy in the arguments used against statins and we briefly explored the vast amount of evidence how statins reduce cardiovascular risk. In part 2 of the blog series, we will continue our journey to explore some latest research on how statins stacked up against other traditional (or no!) therapy in China. We will also look at how "statins causing muscle ache" was recently debunked once more. 
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Doctor prescribing medicine to patient

Statins and cardiovascular risk – Part 1

In this 3 parts blog series, we will explore the fallacy of some alleged claims against statins, a brief overview of the vast amount of data available to guide informed decisions on statin therapy, as well as some latest research on how statin stacked up against other traditional (or no!) therapy in China. We will also look at how "statins causing muscle ache" was elegantly debunked. Finally, we will discuss how we calculate cardiovascular risk and decide who will benefit from statin therapy, as well as how we should utilise non-invasive imaging tools to strive for individual personalised medicine in 21st century.
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https://www.tctmd.com/news/operator-volume-matters-left-main-pci-bcis-analysis

Trusted hands in advanced complex intervention

When it comes to heart disease, especially coronary artery disease, you really want expert cardiologists with high-volume experience and exemplary proven track record of clinical excellence. Dr Chai is an award-winning cardiologist and expert interventionalist specialising in complex coronary intervention (PCI, percutaneous coronary intervention, or stent implantation).

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Lady having chest tightness

Don't let COVID delay your heart treatment

What we are seeing in recent months is that a lot of our patients presented with more severe life-threatening heart disease compared to before the COVID pandemic began. Many people, due to perceived risk or fear of contracting COVID in hospitals, chose to ignore their chest pain or other cardiac symptoms. It is very important to remember that delaying the diagnosis or treatment of heart disease could have potentially life-threatening consequences.

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Measuring blood pressure

Blood pressure and long-term cardiovascular events in young adults

High blood pressure is well recognised to be very common in middle age and elderly population. It is a major risk factor in adverse cardiovascular outcomes including stroke, coronary artery disease, aortic aneurysm and other vascular disease. The real challenge with high blood pressure is that it is almost always silent and causes no symptom – you may feel completely well and normal.
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girl holding heart

CoRe (Part 2) - from CoRe to CaRe

In Part 1 of the CoRe series, we discussed about the evolving concept of complete rehabilitation and how this has rapidly expanded in the field of cancer rehabilitation. In this Part 2 of the series, we will delve into how we can apply CoRe in "prehabilitation" before certain invasive treatment and how we at CardioQinetics are applying this concept to help patients with heart disease.
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Complete Rehabilitation jigsaw

CoRe (Part 1) - COmplete REhabilitation / Prehabilitation

The "core" concept of physical rehabilitation is to promote physical manipulation, education, and facilitation of graded exercises to improve patients' physical functional outcome. Physiotherapists are uniquely placed to become the central piece in the COmplete REhabilitation (CoRe) jigsaw in coordinating multi-modal rehabilitation programme across different therapeutic fields in complex medical conditions.
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girl waking up from sleep

Sleep and cardiovascular health

The breaking results of the unprecedented Apple Heart Study announced this week at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) conference in New Orlean, despite all the caveat of its limitations, provided a glimpse of the future of how wearable technology can be utilised to improve our health being. We are all too familiar with how wearable technology can help track our physical activity / running distances / steps taken each day, etc; but one important area that wearable technology can really transform our understanding is that tranquil few hours each night when our conscious mindfulness rests - our sleep.
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Elderly man and lady running on treadmill

Never too late to start exercise

Even increasing physical activity in midlife reduces mortality by a third. A study published in the JAMA Network Open this week (March 8th, 2019) provided further evidence that regular exercise reduces the risk of dying by 29% to 36%. More shockingly, for inactive individuals, even increasing physical activity during midlife was associated with 32% to 35% lower risk for mortality - this translates to a reduction of death by a third! 
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