Stanford cardiologists and researchers shine at the ACC in San Diego
The 2015 Annual Sessions of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) took place in San Diego March 14-16; Stanford leaders, researchers, and investigators were very well represented with original scientific contributions, as moderators of program sessions, presenting invited lectures, and serving in leadership roles in the ACC.
Two quite notable invited lectures were delivered by Bob Harrington (chair, medicine) and Abraham Verghese (vice chair, education).
Bob Harrington speaks at the Bishop Lecture.
Photo courtesy of ACC/Lagniappe Studio
Abraham Verghese delivers the keynote Simon Dack Lecture.
Photo courtesy of ACC/Lagniappe Studio
Ron Witteles and Alex Perino.
Harrington was invited to give the 46th Annual Louis F. Bishop Lecture, named for a former president of the ACC. The topic of his lecture was “25 Years of Acute Coronary Syndromes: A Paradigm for Collaborative Research and Training the Next Generation,” and it not only covered the past 25 years but also gave a glimpse of the future. Harrington stressed the need for global collaboration to make progress against the disease that kills more people worldwide than any other. His glimpse into the future touted the rapid enrollment of patients into a trial using an Apple app, ResearchKit, the result of a joint project between Stanford and Apple. “This is the new way of doing research,” Harrington said. “When you can enroll 24,000 patients in a few days, that’s disruptive.”
Verghese gave the annual Simon Dack Lecture which was widely noted in the media. Entitling his lecture “I Carry Your Heart,” he talked about the importance of words and touch and rituals. “The relationships we have with patients are unlike any other relationships in society. It’s a powerful encounter,” he said. The former editor-in-chief of Medscape’s theheart.org, Shelley Wood, who attended the ACC meeting on a freelance assignment, wrote this about the Verghese lecture: “As a bonus, Abraham Verghese was the keynote speaker and gave a beautiful talk, quoting e. e. cummings’s ‘I carry your heart with me.’ That in itself was worth the airfare.”
Among the many additional Stanford accomplishments at ACC15 were the following:
- ACC Young Investigator Award Recipients: Joshua Knowles (2nd place) and Atsushi Tachibana (3rd place);
- Many session co-chairs: Todd Brinton, David Maron, Ken Mahaffey, Mintu Turakhia, Paul Zei, Shirley Park, Jennifer Tremmel, Ron Witteles;
- Several oral presenters: Sanjiv Narayan, Jennifer Tremmel, Peter Fitzgerald, Euan Ashley, Mark Hlatky, Marco Perez;
- Several poster presenters: Alex Perino, Ken Mahaffey, Phillip Yang, Paul Wang;
- And a few other notable responsibilities: Ken Mahaffey as a judge for Young Investigator Awards in cardiovascular health outcomes and population genetics; William Fearon as a panelist during a session on choosing which patients receive PCI and which remain on medical therapy; Mintu Turakhia as faculty for a study session for maintenance of certification on electrophysiology; Bob Harrington as a panelist for a late-breaking clinical trial session; Sanjiv Narayan as a panelist during a session on case-based challenges in atrial fibrillation; Marco Perez as a moderator of a poster session on challenges in clinical electrophysiology.
Faculty and fellows also presented a host of papers at the sessions. (View the full list of abstracts below.)
The opportunities to speak or otherwise present research findings were matched by opportunities to hear and to learn. Many futurists have foretold the demise of such subspecialty meetings in recent years, and there have been some declines in attendance. But the two largest US cardiology meetings – the ACC in March and the American Heart Association in November – seem to belie the trend. There will be many more chances for Stanford faculty, researchers, and housestaff to present their research in coming years.