You're listening to This Week in Cardiology from the heart.org, Medscape Cardiology.

This podcast is intended for healthcare professionals only. Any views expressed are the

presenters own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.

Hi everyone. This is John Mandrola from the Heart.org Medscape Cardiology, and this is this week

in Cardiology for march 6th,

2026. This week, some really interesting listener feedback, urgent a.F ablation,

AF ablation as a stroke reducing therapy, ILR, loop recorder accuracy, and heart failure management in the setting of serious disease.

So first is some listener feedback.

I received a nice email about my coverage of the provocative JAMA internal medicine letter

on patient preferences for statin therapy.

This was a letter in which authors from Japan surveyed people on what their smallest

worthwhile difference would be for accepting a daily statin prescription.

I was struck by the findings because when the authors surveyed about 500 adults from the

U.S. and Japan, they found that nearly one in four individuals would refuse statins even if they could get risk reduction

from 20% to zero. And that the smallest worthwhile difference for patients is essentially three times more

than the actual risk reduction found in trials. I took from these observations that most people

tend to be minimizers.

They want a lot more bang for their buck in risk reduction if they were to accept a daily statin.

Well, internist and primary care doctor, Dr. Kuma, Fulmsby, from Rush University in Chicago,

wrote to me to say that, number one, the survey only included people who have never been honest at, and that might select for minimizers. But more importantly, Dr. Fomsby wrote,

this sort of discussion probably hits different when it's done in a personalized setting

with physician-patient continuity. While someone might decline a medication when answering

...