Doctors generally monitor how well cholesterol lowering drugs are working through simple blood tests. A high tech method that uses MRI scanning may let them peek inside the arteries to evaluate drug effectiveness.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) don't just need to worry about their lungs. In order to maximize the quality of life, they also need to monitor their heart health.

Patients with a certain blood type may have a naturally lower risk of dying after heart surgery. Two added blood proteins mean that patients with AB blood are 20 percent are more likely to survive.

For some patients, statins simply aren't effective at lowering their high cholesterol. Now scientists think they may have figured out why the cholesterol-lowering drugs don't work well in some patients.

It's been suggested that blood levels of a protein decline after beginning treatment for heart failure. Using medications to force it to drop if it doesn't happen on its own can reduce hospitalizations and cardiovascular complications.

The number of older patients hospitalized for heart failure or associated complications steadily declined over a decade-long study period that also found that mortality a year after the event has improved.

Stents are tubes that are used to treat narrowed or weakened arteries. In many cases, they can be lifesaving. But are some types of stents safer than others?

Being obese at any age isn't healthy. For adolescent girls, however, it could have dangerous implications on their blood pressure.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials are contemplating a proposal to lower the risk classification of external pacemakers from the highest risk category to labeling them a moderate risk.

Naturally occurring estrogen may aid with ischemic stroke prevention for women under the age of 50. However, in older women the sex hormone may instead increase the risk of stroke.