European Society of Cardiology

Calcium scans cut statin use without changing heart outcomes in CorCal trial

Hosted the Hot Line session where CorCal was presented

To decide who needs a statin, doctors feed age, cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking status into a calculator called the pooled cohort equations. The CorCal Outcomes trial tested a different input: a CT scan that measures calcium deposits in the coronary arteries, a direct sign that plaque is already there.

Updated 2 days ago

Kaiser trial finds digital reminders raise statin refills modestly

New Capabilities

Hosted the trial's first public presentation at its 2026 congress

All 20,604 patients in the trial had low statin adherence: they filled their prescriptions less than 80% of the time in the prior year and had no refill in the prior three months. Kaiser Permanente sent them a secure portal message, a text, a nonsecure email, or nothing beyond usual communication, then counted who refilled.

Updated 7 days ago

AI detects heart failure and valve disease from a standard ECG in under two seconds

New Capabilities

As of September 2026: Hosted the congress where results were presented

An AI tool built at Imperial College London reads heart failure and heart valve disease from a standard electrocardiogram (ECG), a test in clinical use for a century. In a 67,000-patient US trial, it flagged up to 81 percent of heart failure cases and 90 percent of valve disease cases. Each read takes under two seconds.

Updated Sep 28

New heart attack definition corrects decades of under-diagnosis in women

Rule Changes

As of September 2026: Co-developer of the Fifth Universal Definition; host of ESC Congress 2026

For decades, the blood test for heart attacks used a single threshold for every patient. That threshold caught nearly all men having heart attacks but missed some women, because women naturally carry lower levels of the heart-injury protein troponin. The world's four leading cardiovascular organizations just agreed on the first universal definition of a heart attack, and it corrects that bias.

Updated Sep 10

New European guidelines urge every heart patient to be tested for kidney disease

Rule Changes

As of September 2026: Issued first joint CVD-CKD guidelines

In European medicine, the heart and kidney have been treated as separate problems. The first-ever joint guidelines from the European Society of Cardiology and the European Renal Association now treat them as one system that damages itself in a two-way cycle: kidney disease accelerates heart disease, and heart disease accelerates kidney failure.

Updated Sep 7