10 days before my 80th birthday I may have achieved the high point in my medical career. May have! I qualified and sat for the lifetime re-certification examination in Clinical Lipidology and was successful. Upon notifying members of my family, my perspicacious daughter fully understood what was necessary for this achievement. She realized there were major medical information advances which had to be addressed since my initial certification 12 years previously in 2005

This examination was my first examination administered through the Internet and came at an age in which my visual accommodation( focusing) was greatly diminished compared to 12 years earlier. I initially felt I had adequate clinical and biochemical knowledge to pass such a test but subsequently upon embarking on this task, I realized there was going to be a great difference i.e.. various National and International Guidelines were much more emphasized). I was up for the task. However, I refuse to assimilate all these concepts and replace them with my lifetime store of knowledge, especially when they are contradictory to my professional experience and the previously generated effective medical trials which somehow the most youthful generation chooses not to recognize as is the custom in our society that everything new is superior to all old, not true.

Despite having chosen a career as a practicing clinician without any academic aspirations or interests, I have now gained a certain hubris which I intend to exercise. My past experience has been predominately centered upon case studies which is in reality how most of us learn and practice medicine (not randomized controlled trials which do not exactly apply to most of our patients.) Those RCT studies which support my clinical experience will be acknowledged and those that do not will be disparaged.

To illustrate my approach the following link is a 50 minute presentation which because of illness was not consummated summarizing my greater than 40 years experience in clinical and preventive cardiology. My Metabolic Syndrome Journey

Stay tuned for a in depth discussion exhibiting the most common cause for the vast majority of adult cardiovascular disease patients, usually unrecognized and untreated, notably Tim Russert.