Chief’s message:

Happy holidays! This is our final Pulse of 2023 – so, as we close out the calendar year, thank you for all the terrific work you have done this year and for your many good-news submissions to us. We look forward to 2024 where we will continue to focus on the difference we can make in each others lives, our community, and the future leaders of cardiovascular medicine.

We are taking the next two weekends off. We’ll return with the latest news and shout-outs on Sunday, Jan. 7. On behalf of the Duke Heart leadership team, we wish each of you and your loved ones a safe and joyous New Year.

Please find some photos from the Duke Heart Center Holiday Party Photo Booth at the end of the pulse this week.

Highlights of the week:

Heart Team Clears 150 Transplants for 2023; Surpasses 2000 Total

We are thrilled to share that our Heart Transplant team has set a new record! The team has now transplanted more than 150 hearts this year – a feat we believe no other U.S. institution has achieved. They also surpassed a program milestone: transplanting our 2000^th recipient one week ago today. The numbers include pediatric and adult transplant cases.

“I am really proud of the work the team did this year,” says advanced heart failure specialist Adam DeVore, MD, medical director of Duke’s Heart Transplant Program. “The volume and the numbers we have reached are a big deal, but when you think about what they represent —  the number of lives we have impacted, it’s pretty amazing. Just think about how many kids went on to grow up, and parents who were able to continue raising their kids, and grandparents who were able to see their families grow. We’ve helped a remarkable number of people and that is what it’s all about.”

Cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon Jeff Keenan, MD, performed Duke’s 2000^th heart transplant last weekend. Keenan, who did his surgical residency and training at Duke, recently returned to Duke after two years on the faculty of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

“I think for our entire team and program, this is a great accomplishment,” says Keenan. “This reflects a great commitment to our patients with advanced heart failure from the institution and the whole team. It reflects a whole lot of hard work from a lot of people over a long period.”

DeVore’s pride in the team is palpable.

“This is a really remarkable achievement, and I am proud to be part of it. I cannot overstate how important this success is overall for Duke Heart Center. This is not a transplant achievement,” says DeVore, “This is a result of the entire Duke Heart team. These patients are cared for within the Heart Center for a long time before they need a heart transplant. Then, even afterward, our patients continue to be touched by all the different areas within Heart services – from cardiac imaging to the cardiac catheterization lab and electrophysiology, and all of the care units – this is a huge testament to what we’re able to do here, together, within Duke Heart.”

Reaching this number of successful transplants goes beyond just a handful of people, DeVore and Keenan both say. The success is due to the efforts of literally hundreds of people contributing over many years.

“Contributions come from across the spectrum. From everyone who takes care of these patients,” Keenan says. “This includes cardiology, our transplant coordinators, the support teams, social workers, our cardiothoracic anesthesiology team, our OR and CTICU support teams, and then all of the staff and support coming through Duke Hospital – and I’m sure there are a lot of people who do things to support us that I have no idea about that make everything ultimately work.”

DeVore notes the energy and dedication of Jacob Schroder, MD, surgical director of the Heart Transplant program. “Jacob has been like the engine for this team. He really has been a driving force and has done so much for the program. We have a great team, we’re doing great work, and love working together.”

Duke’s heart transplant program, established in 1985, has experienced annual growth for nearly a decade, according to DeVore. “It has grown every year since 2015, which is remarkable. Year over year, growth like this is difficult to sustain, but there are no signs of letting up. He says the growth has come through partnering with other great heart failure programs throughout the southeast, and also through innovation and research.

“Any time we’re a part of new discovery, that’s a great thing,” DeVore adds. “But to be able to do it and immediately impact care and see results like this is really, really rewarding and certainly a great thing. Hopefully, we can take this and educate other centers on how to do this so we can keep expanding transplant across the globe, too.”

Congratulations to all for a great year!

 

Ngeno Among Five Recipients of Inaugural Corey Legacy Award

Congratulations to cardiologist Titus Ngeno, MD, MSc-GH, assistant professor of medicine! Ngeno is among five inaugural recipients of the Dr. G. Ralph Corey Legacy Award. The awardees were announced last week by the Hubert-Yeargan Center and Duke Clinical Research Institute, the partnering organizations that created the award and established a research fund to carry on Dr. Corey’s vision of “developing the next generation of globally educated, socially responsible clinician educators and scientists dedicated to improving health equity at home and abroad.”

Ngeno and Neelima Navuluri, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine in the division of pulmonary, allergy, and critical care, together were named awardees for their collaborative research project, Validation of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Patient Related Outcome Measures among Adults in Kenya” which will be conducted at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya.

Cardiopulmonary diseases are the leading cause of death globally and exert a disproportionate burden of morbidity in low income regions of the world such as Sub-Saharan Africa. One effective intervention for treatment of cardiopulmonary disease is cardiopulmonary rehabilitation. Such rehabilitation involves a comprehensive set of patient-tailored treatments such as aerobic exercise, endurance training, strength exercises, education, and behavior change designed to improve physical and psychological well-being among patients with chronic cardiac and pulmonary disease. It improves exercise tolerance, functional status, respiratory symptoms, depressive symptoms and quality of life among patients with chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases such as heart failure, chronic obstructive lung disease and post-tuberculosis lung disease.

However, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation is not widely available in most of sub-saharan Africa, including in Kenya, according to the team’s project proposal. Thus, there is a critical need for further implementation studies to increase evidence for and availability of rehab programs. 

Ngeno and Navuluri’s co-principal investigators include Neil MacIntyre, professor of medicine in the division of pulmonary, allergy, and critical care; Dr. David Lagat of Moi University School of Medicine, and Dr. Carolyne Lusweti, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Ngeno and Navuluri’s project aims to assess which cardiopulmonary functional assessment and quality of life measures are most appropriate for the Kenyan setting. The study will enroll 102 participants comprising healthy controls, patients with pulmonary disease (chronic obstructive lung disease, post-tuberculosis lung disease), and patients with cardiac disease (valvular and non-valvular disease, heart failure). Functional capacity and quality of life assessments will be compared across groups. The project findings will yield insight into which metrics would be most appropriate for routine clinical assessments as well as establish reference ranges for future research studies.

Additional inaugural recipients are Hutton Chapman, MD, Sharla Rent, MD, and Sweta Patel, MD. To learn more about the Corey Legacy Award, visit https://duke.is/6/dm83; to read about the other research projects funded this year, please see the lead story in the Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health’s latest quarterly newsletter: HYC Happenings – Fall 2023

Congratulations, Titus!

 

Kudos to Melissa Williams!

Congratulations to Duke Heart Center of Excellence team member Melissa Williams! Williams graduated from Duke Management Academy’s year-long program on Wed., Dec. 13. The program, created for mid-level managers, is part of Duke’s commitment to develop leaders at all levels within Duke University and Health System. Williams is clinical manager of our registry team in CV Informatics and Quality Improvement.

Her team (comprised of Williams, Keith Holder, Aris Marton, Katherine Fox, and Danielle Wiggins) received the best presentation and paper award for their project, “Help at Students’ Fingers:  A Mobile App to Navigate Well-being Resources”.

Way to go, Melissa!

 

Duke Heart continuing innovation with Impella RP Flex

Imran and Jeff worked together placing the first RP Flex Impella this week.  Some pictures included.  This is gratifying after our team worked to help with some of the first RP trial patients in the OR and cath labs.  Great work team!

 

New publications from the Duke Heart Team

Congratulations to Bill Kraus, MD and his co-authors on their latest publication!

The Science of Precision Prevention: Research Opportunities and Clinical Applications to Reduce Cardiovascular Health Disparities was published online this week in JACC: Advances.

 

Duke Health Signs Pledge for Ethical, Responsible AI in Health Care

Duke Health is among a leading group of health systems and payers from across the U.S. to sign a pledge advancing ethical and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence technology in health care.

The pledge announced today at the annual conference hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, is a voluntary commitment to the principles of safety, security and trust that are fundamental to the future of AI.

“AI presents unequalled potential for advancing health with new scientific discoveries, improved diagnoses and treatment of diseases and better systems that free our workers to dedicate their expertise to patient care rather than administrative chores,” said Craig T. Albanese, MD, chief executive officer of Duke University Health System. 

“But we recognize that AI also has the potential to be misused,” Albanese said. “By signing this pledge, we are publicly stating our commitment to work toward the better good.”

Mary Klotman, MD, executive vice president for health affairs at Duke University and dean of Duke University School of Medicine, said establishing Duke’s role as a leader in trustworthy AI has been an institutional priority for years and is foundational to advancing better health.

“This pledge actually reflects many years of work that Duke Health has already undertaken to establish the infrastructures we need to pursue AI with integrity,” Klotman said. “It puts us on record with our commitment.”

In addition to signing the pledge, Duke Health has been a founding member of the Coalition for Health AI, or CHAI, established to develop guidelines and guardrails for fair and credible applications of AI in health care.

Duke Health has also built a framework for the governance and evaluation of clinical algorithms used throughout the organization. Duke’s Algorithm-Based Clinical Decision Support framework is designed to foster innovative, safe, equitable, and high-quality patient care. This is achieved with human oversight throughout the use of an AI program to ensure that transparency, quality, and ownership are maintained.

“First and foremost, AI should serve humans,” said Michael Pencina, PhD, Duke Health’s chief data scientist and director of Duke AI Health. “It’s imperative that AI is developed and applied in a trustworthy manner, and we have been engaged in establishing that foundation for the last few years, as evidenced by our role in CHAI and recent publications. We are not catching up on this — it’s something that has been a differentiator in terms of being careful and proactive — and our signature on the pledge is a further confirmation of our commitments.”

 

ICYMI: December Leadership Town Hall

The latest Duke University Health System Leadership Town Hall video from Tuesday, Dec. 12, is now available on Leadership Café. Check it out when you get some time. Leadership Town Hall is held via Zoom on the 4^th Tuesday of each month from 12-12:45 p.m.

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March. It is currently mandatory in 7E/CICU through 12/21.
• Lots of holiday fun in-house throughout the holiday season! Be sure to check out Season’s Greetings Bingo; pop-up Cheer Stations (13^th-18^th); and Tribute Snowflakes: An Act of Remembrance in the corridor from DMP to Duke Central Tower throughout December. Details on the DUH SharePoint site.
• Everyone working at DUH on Monday, Dec. 25 is invited to enjoy a complementary holiday meal.

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Dec. 19: AHA Recap, part 2 with Manesh Patel and Kristin Newby. 5 p.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are housed on Warpwire. The AHA Recap, Part 1 from Dec. 12 has been uploaded. To access recordings please visit: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required. Enjoy!

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Dec. 20: EP Case Presentation with Ivan Nenadic Wood and Husam Salah. DMP 2W96 (in-person only).

Dec. 22: No CD Fellows Core Curriculum conference today. Happy holidays!

MDEpiNet: RAPID PASSION CV Virtual Think Tank, Jan. 9

Predictable And SuStainable Implementation Of National CardioVascular Registries: PASSION CVR — Registry-Supported Infrastructure Development for Prospective Trials: Pathways for DEI and “Long, Long” Term Vital Status Use Cases

Tuesday, January 9, 2024, 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST

Meeting Objectives:

• Pragmatic aspects of CV device research approaches to DEI issues.
• Pragmatic aspects of developing a streamlined, high quality, “long, long” (> 5 yr) vital status profile that could be predictably and reliably accessed by clinical trial sponsors and sufficient for public health safety assessments going forward.

Click Here to register!

 

Office of Faculty Announces Event with Israni of Stanford Medicine, Feb. 26

Academic Medicine, with all its complexities, naturally includes conflict amongst its crucial collaborators – trainees, faculty, staff, communities and more. 21st century leadership skills require all of us to strategically leverage components of this conflict for constructive change, with intentional and thoughtful actions. This talk will weave together themes from restorative justice and design thinking; and how they can be applied to artificial intelligence and JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion), offering a case for new ways of leveraging conflict to advance a culture of connectedness and belonging. The featured speaker will be Sonoo Thadaney Israni of Stanford University’s Presence Center.

February 26: Leveraging Conflict for Constructive Change. 4-5:30 p.m., DN 2002. Presented by the Office for Faculty. Refreshments will follow. To learn more and register: https://duke.is/8/8d7f.  

Call for Abstracts: Duke’s Annual Quality & Safety Conference

Save the date for Duke’s Annual Quality and Safety Conference scheduled for April 11 in the Trent Semans Center. Click here to view Abstract Guidelines. Abstracts are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted. Contact cynthia.gordon@duke.edu or kyle.rehder@duke.edu with any questions. 

Upcoming CME Symposia for Spring, 2024

Heads up on some CME dates you might want to put on the calendar for next year. Our Duke Sports Cardiology & Sudden Death in Athletes symposium will be held at the Trent Semans Center on Friday, April 12, 2024. And our Duke Heart Failure Symposium will be held at the Durham Hilton on Saturday, May 4, 2024.

Registration won’t be open for a while, but if you have any questions about either event, please reach out to Christy Darnell.

As soon as registration opens, we’ll have that listed here in Pulse.

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

Duke Heart in the News:

December 5 — Nishant Shah and Neha Pagidipati

Medscape

Meet the Newest Acronym in Primary Care: CKM

December 6 — Stephen Greene

HCP Live

Semaglutide: The Drug of Today and a Steppingstone to Tomorrow

December 7 — Joseph Turek, Paul Martin, and the Nolasco family

Texas Tribune

How one family carved out Medicaid coverage for a rare treatment

December 9 — Jonathan Piccini

The Washington Post

Cold weather may raise the risk of this heart problem

December 11 — Marat Fudim

HealthCentral

The Four Stages of Congestive Heart Failure

December 11 — Svati Shah

American Heart Association Newsroom

Scholars named for research leadership program to increase diversity in clinical trials

December 11 — Jacob Schroder

The Hearty Soul

Doctors Brought Dead Heart ‘back to life’ For Groundbreaking Transplant**

**originally published in Jan. 2020; this is an updated version

 

 

Highlights of the week:

MUSIC-HFpEF1 Trial Launches at Duke

We are excited to announce a new clinical trial taking place at Duke and led by advanced heart failure specialist Marat Fudim, MD. The Modulation of SERCA2a In Cardiomyopathy – Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (MUSIC- HFpEF1) clinical trial launched in early November with the dosing of our first enrolled patient at Duke University Hospital. Our second patient was enrolled last week.

MUSIC-HFpEF1 is a first-in-human trial using gene therapy to modify the pathophysiology of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Half of all heart failure patients are diagnosed with HFpEF, characterized by abnormal ventricular relaxation and elevated filling pressures. The trial, led by Fudim along with interventional cardiologist Manesh Patel, MD, as sub-investigator, presents a true multidisciplinary effort as it includes the expertise of members of the Duke Early Phase Research Unit (DEPRU), the cardiac catheterization lab, and the Cardiac Diagnostic Unit (CDU).

The study drug is an adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapy that is directly delivered to cardiac ventricular muscle cells via a proprietary intracoronary infusion system for enhancing the protein expression and functional activity of the SERCA2a gene.

“We believe this should, at least in theory, reduce the stiffness of the heart, which is the key problem in HFpEF,” Fudim said.

The trial will enroll patients with HFpEF confirmed by rigorous exercise hemodynamics and gas exchange in an open-label, dose-escalation, 52-week Phase 1b/2a clinical trial. The trial is being conducted at two sites, Duke and the University of Texas Southwestern.

While the initial primary goal is to assess safety following intra-coronary SRD-001 infusion, clinical efficacy will also be assessed with cutting-edge approaches.

If you have patients you think might be suitable and interested in participating, or if you have additional questions about the study, please contact Marat Fudim.

 

Visiting Moi CV Faculty Update

We received thoughtful feedback this week from our recent visitors from Moi University and Teaching Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. Thanks to everyone who helped support Titus Ngeno, our Duke-Kenya cardiovascular lead, in hosting Drs. Joan Kiyeng and David Lagat, members of the Moi cardiology faculty who visited us in October.

Kiyeng and Lagat spent time observing and learning some of Duke Heart’s best clinical practices and learning more about our care delivery and management systems. Additionally, they were able to get to know members of our faculty better.

Of note, they spent time with Terry Fortin and Nishant Shah in the Cardiac ICU, where they observed the care of our LVAD patients and advanced heart failure population; and time in the cardiac catheterization lab with Andrew Wong, David Kong, Jenn Rymer, Marat Fudim, Schuyler Jones, and Rich Krasuski and were able to observe the watchman procedure, TAVI, complex caths, and post-transplant biopsies. They spent time with members of our electrophysiology team, including Larry Jackson, Camille Frazier-Mills, Zak Loring, Rob Lewis, and James Daubert, and observed several ablations for atrial fibrillation, as well as device implantations. They even had the opportunity to practice using an intracardiac ultrasound stimulator.

During their visit to the PAC and our Consult Services team, they spent time with Gerald Bloomfield, Titus, Cary Ward, and Michelle Kelsey, and more time with both Jerry and Titus, as well as Sreek Vemulapalli while visiting the CDU, and with Igor Klem to observe patients undergoing cardiac MRI.

In their follow-up report to Duke about their visit, the team noted our “excellent atmosphere” for mentorship, learning, and patient care with dedicated and motivated staff, along with excellent teamwork and support systems with highly trained personnel that make clinical care seamless.

“Thank you for the immense support, and engagement with our cardiology colleagues from Kenya during their recent trip to Duke,” said Ngeno. “Joan and David had very productive interactions and great conversations exploring future growth opportunities. They also got to watch a (winning) Duke football home game, courtesy of Duke alums John H. Lawrence & John E. Lawrence.”

Thanks again to all who made this site visit possible and successful, and for taking the time to share your knowledge with Joan and David.

Great job!

 

DUSON, CTSI Collaborate to Advance Research in Health Equity

Through a collaboration designed to advance research in health equity and social drivers of health, the Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and the Center for Precision Health have partnered with the Center for Nursing Research at the Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON) to bring more than 20,000 biological samples and linked data from a community-based registry at Duke Kannapolis to investigators at DUSON.

The new DUSON-MURDOCK Biorepository includes de-identified samples and associated data from nearly 12,000 racially and ethnically diverse participants in the Kannapolis Population Based Cohort, a longitudinal cohort based at CTSI’s research site in Kannapolis.

“We are thrilled to make thousands of biospecimens and associated clinical and outcome data available to the School of Nursing through this science-forward collaboration,” said Svati Shah, MD, MHS, who directs Duke Kannapolis and the Center for Precision Health. “This partnership is exactly what we envisioned when we created our biorepository initiative with the intention to share this powerful resource with more Duke collaborators.”

The Biorepository Transformation Initiative is available to all Duke researchers, who can complete this brief interest form as a first step toward accessing samples. DUSON is well and uniquely positioned to tap into this initiative to create a local biorepository to facilitate biomarker research to support their strategic priorities in health equity, social drivers of health, and nurse-led models of care.

“We are excited to test hypotheses exploring how social and contextual experiences can be embedded in our biology and thus our health. Understanding how these experiences impact health is a key piece of our strategic plan for research,” said Sharron L. Docherty, PhD, PNP, RN, FAAN, vice dean for research at DUSON. “Thanks to the sample size, diversity, and the number of chronic health conditions present across this data set, we can explore vital questions related to how the environment influences biology.”

Researchers at DUSON will use their DUSON-MURDOCK Biorepository in two relatively new areas of research: social epigenetics, or how social experiences become embodied in humans and can impact health in positive and negative ways, and social genomics, or how fixed biological traits underpin health outcomes that are influenced by social factors, such as stress.

“Duke Kannapolis will be a valuable collaborator as we explore ways to use these biospecimens to better understand how a genetic predisposition for a health outcome may be modified by social factors, and in turn, how social factors may become genetically embedded in humans, changing biological function,” said Julia K.L. Walker, PhD, director of the DUSON-Biomarker Laboratory. “The database is a remarkable resource.”

Data generated from the project will be returned to the Kannapolis database for other investigators to use for continued population-based research.

Kais Gadhoumi, PhD, assistant research professor at DUSON, will lead informatics and data management on the project. Duke Kannapolis leadership on the project includes Julie Eckstrand, RPh, executive director for scientific programs, and Douglas Wixted, MMCi, research program leader.

 

Shout-out to Tcheng!

Congrats to interventionalist Jimmy Tcheng! He has been acknowledged as one of NC’s most respected doctors, as selected by his peers. Check out the Business News article below (under “Duke Heart in the News”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bowers Earns FACC

We are thrilled to share with the Duke Heart team that Midge Bowers, DNP, has been elected to Fellowship by the American College of Cardiology. Bowers, a nurse practitioner with our Heart Failure Same Day Access Clinic, is — we believe – the first APP at Duke University Hospital to receive the honor.

As a newly elected Fellow, Bowers has been invited to attend the ACC’s prestigious Convocation ceremony which will be held during the ACC’s Annual Scientific Sessions in Atlanta this coming April.

Congratulations, Midge! This is a wonderful achievement and well deserved!

 

Cox Earns DNP, Post-Grad Certification

Congratulations to Kevin Cox who graduated from the Duke University School of Nursing this weekend! Kevin graduated with a Doctorate in Nursing Practice and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Nursing Education. His project entitled “Implementation of Educational Intervention in Duke Left Ventricular Assist Device Department by Adding STOP-BANG Sleep Apnea Screening” was implemented at Duke University Hospital.

Congratulations, Kevin!

 

 

Filming for ARTEMIS Launch

This week we had the pleasure of hosting a small film crew as part of the collaborative effort between Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and Novo Nordisk for the ARTEMIS trial, which is expected to launch in mid-2024.

The ARTEMIS trial is a global cardiovascular outcomes study that aims to evaluate the effects of a study medicine versus placebo on cardiovascular outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction. This double-blind, randomized trial will follow 10,000 eligible adults for two years. It is a large-scale study to investigate the potential of the study medicine, an IL-6 inhibitor administered once monthly as a subcutaneous injection, to reduce the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

The crew filmed with Adrian Hernandez, MD, MHS, Vice Dean and Executive Director of DCRI and Principal Investigator for ARTEMIS, and interventional cardiologist, Jenn Rymer, MD, MBA, who will serve as the site PI for Duke.

The video will be released early next year as part of a meeting invitation to site investigators. To learn more about the trial, please visit https://duke.is/j/cydp.

New publications from the Duke Heart Team

Congratulations to the following team members on their latest publications!

Role of Advanced Practice Providers in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit Team, was published online this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Callie Tennyson, Midge Bowers, Allison Dimsdale, Jordan McKenzie-Solis, and Jason Katz are the Duke representatives among the co-authors.

And Impact and Sustainability of a Palliative Care Education Module in Patients With Heart Failure published in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, published online Dec. 4, 2023. Duke authors are Shelley Thompson, Allison Lindgren, Jaime McDermott, Stephanie Barnes, Carolina Tennyson, and Bradi Granger.

Congrats to all!

Upcoming CME Symposia for Spring, 2024

Heads up on some CME dates you might want to put on the calendar for next year. Our Duke Sports Cardiology & Sudden Death in Athletes symposium will be held at the Trent Semans Center on Friday, April 12, 2024. And our Duke Heart Failure Symposium will be held at the Durham Hilton on Saturday, May 4, 2024.

Registration won’t be open for a while, but if you have any questions about either event, please reach out to Christy Darnell.

As soon as registration opens, we’ll have that listed here in Pulse.

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.
• Lots of holiday fun in-house throughout the holiday season. Friday, Dec. 15 is CozyFest: Holiday Sweater Spectactular!, sponsored by Duke University Hospital. Also, be sure to check out Season’s Greetings Bingo; pop-up Cheer Stations (13^th-18^th); and Tribute Snowflakes: An Act of Remembrance in the corridor from DMP to Duke Central Tower throughout December. Details on the DUH SharePoint site.
• And, everyone working at DUH on Monday, Dec. 25 is invited to enjoy a complementary holiday meal.

 

Transplant Grand Rounds

Dec. 12: Perioperative Anesthetic Management for Patients Undergoing Solid Organ Transplantation with Adam J. Milam. Noon, DN 2001 or via Zoom.

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Dec. 12: AHA Recap with Manesh Patel and Kristin Newby. 5 p.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are housed on Warpwire. The most recent CGRs with Dr. Holger Thiele of the University of Leipzig, Dr. Daniel Friedman of Duke, and Dr. Eric Secemsky of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center can all be found there. To access them, please visit: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required. Enjoy!

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Dec. 13: HF/Txp Case Presentation with Joshua Rushakoff. Noon, DMP 2W96 (in-person only).

Dec. 15: Diseases of the Pericardium with Andrew Wang. Noon, Zoom only.

MDEpiNet: RAPID PASSION CV Virtual Think Tank Announced

Predictable And SuStainable Implementation Of National CardioVascular Registries: PASSION CVR — Registry-Supported Infrastructure Development for Prospective Trials: Pathways for DEI and “Long, Long” Term Vital Status Use Cases

Tuesday, January 9, 2024, 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST

Meeting Objectives:

• Pragmatic aspects of CV device research approaches to DEI issues.
• Pragmatic aspects of developing a streamlined, high quality, “long, long” (> 5 yr) vital status profile that could be predictably and reliably accessed by clinical trial sponsors and sufficient for public health safety assessments going forward.

Click Here to register!

Office of Faculty Announces Event with Israni of Stanford Medicine, Feb. 26

Academic Medicine, with all its complexities, naturally includes conflict amongst its crucial collaborators – trainees, faculty, staff, communities and more. 21st century leadership skills require all of us to strategically leverage components of this conflict for constructive change, with intentional and thoughtful actions. This talk will weave together themes from restorative justice and design thinking; and how they can be applied to artificial intelligence and JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion), offering a case for new ways of leveraging conflict to advance a culture of connectedness and belonging. The featured speaker will be Sonoo Thadaney Israni of Stanford University’s Presence Center.

February 26: Leveraging Conflict for Constructive Change. 4-5:30 p.m., DN 2002. Presented by the Office for Faculty. Refreshments will follow. To learn more and register: https://duke.is/8/8d7f.  

Call for Abstracts: Duke’s Annual Quality & Safety Conference

Save the date for Duke’s Annual Quality and Safety Conference scheduled for April 11 in the Trent Semans Center. Click here to view Abstract Guidelines. Abstracts are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted. Contact cynthia.gordon@duke.edu or kyle.rehder@duke.edu with any questions.

 

Final Week for A&H Winterfest

The final Thursday of Winterfest Marketplace 2023, will be this week: December 14. The annual holiday art show and sale hosted by Arts & Health at Duke features local North Carolina-based artisans who are displaying and selling their work to Duke Health employees, visitors, and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital.

Art will be available for purchase from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, and the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

Duke Heart in the News:

December 1 — James Tcheng

Business North Carolina

2023 Top Doctors: A report on the state’s most respected doctors as selected by their peers

December 5 — David Harpole

OncLive

AEGEAN Subgroup Analysis Fails to Demonstrate Clear Benefit With Perioperative Durvalumab Plus Chemo in EGFR+ NSCLC

December 7 — Neha Pagidipati, Jennifer Green, Susan Spratt, Jashalynn German, Matthew Crowley, Ryan Jeffrey, Ranee Chatterjee, and Bryan Batch

AJMC

Inspiring Clinicians to Take Action on Closing Diabetes Care Gaps

Highlights of the week:

Pauly Named to Duke Health Leadership Roles, Effective Jan. 31

Duke Health has named Gregory Pauly, currently executive vice president and chief operating officer for Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, to three key leadership roles: group president of Acute Care Services for Duke University Health System; president of Duke University Hospital; and Vice Dean for Clinical and Academic Integration at Duke University School of Medicine. Pauly will join the Duke Health team on Jan. 31, 2024.

In these roles, Pauly will provide oversight of the strategic direction, fiscal management, and program development for all acute care services across DUHS, including Duke University Hospital, Duke Regional Hospital, and Duke Raleigh Hospital campuses. 

“Greg is an accomplished health care executive with proven experience in hospital operations, ambulatory practice management, strategic business planning, and clinical program development,” said Thomas A. Owens, MD, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Duke University Health System.

“With his vast experience in the operations and administration of a large academic medical center and ambulatory care network, Greg brings a wealth of knowledge and visionary leadership to his new role as group president for Acute Care Services and president of Duke University Hospital,” Owens said.

“As vice dean, Pauly will collaborate closely with clinical chairs, vice deans, IT leaders and other leaders in the School of Medicine and the health system, as well as other relevant Duke schools, to further strengthen the link between clinical and academic missions,” said Mary Klotman, MD, executive vice president for Health Affairs, Duke University and dean of the School of Medicine.

During his more than 20-year career at Mass General, Pauly led development of multiple system-wide service lines, the launch of an ambulatory care transformation program, and extensive work to reduce barriers to discharge and length of stay. 

Pauly was instrumental in enhancing the integration with system physicians through new employment and compensation models as well as developing new plans for provider growth.

He was also directly responsible for all administrative and clinical operations of both the hospital and the physician’s organization, enhancing the integration with system physicians through new employment and compensation models as well as developing new plans for provider growth.

We look forward to working with him!

Fellowship Matches Announced

We’re excited to share our fellowship matches for 2024! Matches were announced on November 29 as part of National Fellowship Match Day.

Congratulations to the following ten fellows who are joining our Cardiology Fellowship training program:

• Tess Allan will join us from the University of Chicago 
• Cosette Champion will join us from Washington University, St. Louis
• Vincent Delgado will join us from the University of Texas, Southwestern
• Jemi Galani will join us from Emory
• Mugdha Joshi will join us from Stanford
• Hubie Haywood, Jonathan Kusner, Hannah Schwennesen, and Nishkala Shivakumar will all join us from Duke
• Josh Sink will join us from Northwestern University

 

Congratulations to our new Advanced Heart Failure fellows:

• Haya Aziz will join us from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is completing her training in cardiac imaging.
• David Elliot will join us from our cardiology fellowship program
• Joseph Lerman will join us from our advanced training in cardiology program

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to our new Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellow:

• Ilya Shadrin will join us from our cardiology fellowship program

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to our Adult Congenital Heart Disease fellow:

• Nina Morgan will join us from the University of Florida

The Department of Medicine released a celebratory Match Day video, to celebrate our Duke internal medicine residents and their matches; a full list of all where Duke residents matche can be found here: https://duke.is/4/hjc9.

A big shout-out to all of our program leaders, current fellows, and faculty members who took time to interview candidates and to showcase all that our programs at Duke have to offer. We’re looking forward to working with our newest team members when they join us in July.

Well done, everyone!

 

Latest AF Treatment Guidelines Released; Piccini, Thomas among co-authors

Congratulations to Duke electrophysiologists Jonathan Piccini and Kevin Thomas, Duke fellowship graduates Paul Hess and Anne Marie Valente, and to each of their co-authors on the publication of the latest atrial fibrillation treatment guidelines! 

The 2023 ACC/AHA/ACCP/HRS Guideline for the Diagnosis and Management of Atrial Fibrillation: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines provides recommendations to guide clinicians in the treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation. It was published this week in Circulation.

Way to go!

Duke Fellows Represent Duke Heart for STEM Goes Red

A big shout out to our amazing fellows, Sarah Snow and Kiki Osude, who generously gave their time to be mentors at the American Heart Association’s “STEM Goes Red” event for middle school girls in Wake and Durham counties on Thursday, November 9. The event hosted 110 girls chosen from local Title I schools to promote interest and increase exposure to the STEM fields.

Kiki and Sarah conducted speed mentoring sessions where they met with 4-5 girls every 7 minutes to discuss STEM opportunities, and in particular, key mentors and role models, obstacles that had to be overcome, and why they decided to pursue medicine/cardiology. The students were really engaged and excited. Neha Pagidipati and Melissa Daubert also participated in the event as expert panelists.

To learn more about the event, you can see a short report here from ABC-11, WTVD, or by visiting the AHA’s website: https://duke.is/2/bd3g

Great work, Sarah and Kiki!!

 

 

Shout-outs to Andreae, Lerman, and Sullivan!

We received a shout-out to several cardiology fellows this week:

“A shout out and huge THANK YOU to the following fellows who went above and beyond to cover CICU and night shifts on short notice in the past week: Andrew Andreae, Joe Lerman and Lonnie Sullivan.” — Anna Lisa Chamis, MD

Solid teamwork!

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Dec. 5: The Wild, Wild West of Peripheral Intervention: Innovations and Evidence Formation to Standardize Practice with Eric Secemsky of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. 7 a.m., DN2001 or via Zoom. Please note time change!

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are uploaded to Warpwire. Recordings can be accessed via this link: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Dec. 6: DHP Case Presentation with Jawan Abdulrahim. Noon. In-person only, DMP 2W96.

Dec. 8: EKG Review with Thomas Bashore. Zoom only.

Office of Faculty Announces Event with Israni of Stanford Medicine, Feb. 26

Academic Medicine, with all its complexities, naturally includes conflict amongst its crucial collaborators – trainees, faculty, staff, communities and more. 21st century leadership skills require all of us to strategically leverage components of this conflict for constructive change, with intentional and thoughtful actions. This talk will weave together themes from restorative justice and design thinking; and how they can be applied to artificial intelligence and JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion), offering a case for new ways of leveraging conflict to advance a culture of connectedness and belonging. The featured speaker will be Sonoo Thadaney Israni of Stanford University’s Presence Center.

February 26: Leveraging Conflict for Constructive Change. 4-5:30 p.m., DN 2002. Presented by the Office for Faculty. Refreshments will follow. To learn more and register: https://duke.is/8/8d7f.  

 

 Call for Abstracts: Duke’s Annual Quality & Safety Conference

Save the date for Duke’s Annual Quality and Safety Conference scheduled for April 11 in the Trent Semans Center. Click here to view Abstract Guidelines. Abstracts are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted. Contact cynthia.gordon@duke.edu or kyle.rehder@duke.edu with any questions.

  

A&H Winterfest 2023

The dates for Winterfest Marketplace 2023, the annual holiday art show and sale hosted by Arts & Health at Duke, will take place across six Thursdays in November and December, local North Carolina-based artisans will display and sell their work to Duke Health employees, visitors and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital.

The event begins November 2 and runs until December 14. During Winterfest, art will be available for purchase on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans will include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

 

Duke Heart in the News:

November 17 — Duke University

Cardiology Advisor

Older Age, More Comorbidities Predict Favorable BMI Outcomes Among Youth

November 28 — Marat Fudim

Health Central

Are Swollen Feet a Sign of Congestive Heart Failure?

November 28 — Sarah Snow

Health Central

What Is Peripartum Cardiomyopathy?

November 29 — Marat Fudim

Health Central

The Four Stages of Congestive Heart Failure

Chief’s message:

Happy Thanksgiving to all — I wanted to send a brief note expressing gratitude and appreciation for all the things you do for our patients and our Duke Heart Team. Over the last several years we have spent time focusing on ensuring we keep our patients and each other safe and healthy. At the same time, we have had an unwavering commitment to train the next generation of leaders in cardiovascular medicine while refocusing our energies on making meaningful discoveries. This has all been on the backdrop of ever-changing landscape in healthcare, where we are fortunate to be part of a system like Duke. This work has been hard and at times difficult to accomplish our missions, leaving us feeling stressed and out of energy.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a time to spend with friends and family catching up and reflecting on the past year, with gratitude for all the things we have. Reflecting on the last year, I am in awe of the amazing effort by so many, the impact of the discoveries and research we conduct, and the care we have provided – at times through silent acts, often in the service of others. Personally, the relationships we have with each other, and the example that you all set for our patients, colleagues, and our teams helps in part provide the fuel and energy to accomplish our missions.

I hope you all get some time with your family and loved ones over the upcoming weeks.  I also want to thank those of you that are helping cover our clinical services so we can continue to help all of the patients and our community that need care during these times.

As we continue forward in service and purpose of our missions and patients, we hope you have some time to focus on your own health and can recharge for the upcoming year.

Highlights of the week:

Latest STS Star Ratings for Thoracic Surgery Released

Congratulations to our outstanding thoracic surgery team! The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) has posted the General Thoracic Surgery Database Fall 2023 Analysis that includes results for cases between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2023. The Star Ratings for both Duke University Hospital and Duke Raleigh Hospital continue to excellent!

The Star Ratings for both DUH and DRaH for the previous and current harvest are represented in the chart shown here.

Way to go!

Annual Turkey Bowl Matchup

The tradition continues! Many thanks to all who participated as players and officials in the annual Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving Day – and thanks to all our fans who came to cheer the teams on. The annual Duke vs. VA matchup resulted in a 21-21 tie!

 

Kudos to Regan!

We received a note of kudos for cardiology fellow Jessica Regan this week.

“Hi Anna Lisa, I just wanted to send kudos to Jess R. for outstanding work on her overnight shift last night. She helped with a complex post-procedure patient with grace and total professionalism. I am so proud of her as a young doctor and former Duke chief. Hope you pass along how thankful we were in the lab that she helped us care for this patient.” – Jenn Rymer, MD

Nicely done, Jess!

 

 

 

 

Shout-out to Salah!

We received a shout-out to cardiology fellow Husam Salah this week. 

“First-year cardiology fellow Husam Salah stepped up to cover two CICU shifts this week at the last minute for unanticipated illnesses. Much appreciated Husam!” – Anna Lisa Chamis, MD

Thanks, Husam!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Domino Heart Transplant Success for Children with Congenital Heart Disease

When three-month-old Asher Hobby needed a heart transplant, his parents eagerly agreed to help save another life at the same time. In June 2023 at Duke Health, Asher received a new heart from a deceased donor — then the healthy valves and arteries from Asher’s old heart were transplanted into another infant with heart disease.

Months later, both children are growing stronger and healthier every day.

The innovation, known as a domino heart transplant, builds on the technique of partial heart transplantation pioneered at Duke in 2022 and may increase the number of hearts available for children in need. Instead of using mechanical valves that require multiple revision surgeries over time, the partial heart transplant uses human valves that will grow along with the child.

“It’s probably one of the biggest advances in congenital heart surgery in the last 40 years,” said Duke pediatric heart surgeon Joseph Turek, MD, who led both surgeries. “It’s a wonderful setup where two children can benefit from one initial gift.”

Greensboro, NC residents Kayle Cooper and Drew Hobby became concerned when their newborn son Asher stopped eating normally. Local doctors discovered Asher’s heart muscle was damaged beyond repair. Cooper and Hobby brought Asher to Duke, where he was hospitalized and placed on the national heart transplant waitlist.

Several months later, Asher’s parents got the news they’d been waiting for; Asher had been matched with a donor heart. The opportunity came with a chance to help another child with heart disease, one who needed new heart valves. Although Asher’s heart muscle was damaged, his heart valves were healthy. “When we were asked if we would like for Asher’s heart valves to be donated, we immediately said ‘yes, of course we would!’” Cooper said.

First, Asher’s heart was removed and replaced with the donor’s heart. Then, instead of discarding Asher’s old heart, surgeons harvested its healthy valves and arteries and transplanted them into the other child at Duke the next day. Four months later, both children are growing and meeting important developmental milestones.

Turek hopes more pediatric heart centers will adopt the domino heart transplant approach to save more babies’ lives.

“Twenty percent of infants waiting for a heart transplant won’t get one,” he said. “Finding a way to double the number of patients who can receive the gift of organ donation is going to help so many children who may have otherwise died waiting on a heart transplant. My mission is to spread this idea to other institutions and make it available for kids across the country and hopefully across the world.”

*This story is also featured in a Duke Health video, which can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtu.be/E7roMzDCeAU

 

Ginsburg to Receive PMWC Luminary Award

Congratulations to Duke adjunct professor of medicine in cardiology, Geoffrey S. Ginsburg, MD, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the NIH All of Us Research Program. Ginsburg has been selected to receive the Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) Luminary Award! He was selected by the PMWC for his pioneering work in personalized and genomic medicine.

Through Ginsburg’s research efforts and collaborations, he has made significant contributions to the fields of oncology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic disorders. He has also served as an outstanding leader in the field —  as co-chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Genomic and Precision Health and as founder and inaugural president of the Global Genomics Medicine Consortium (G2MC), as well as co-chair of the International 100K+ Cohorts Consortium.

The award will be presented to Ginsburg in January when the 2024 PMWC convenes at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, CA.

Congratulations, Geoff!

 

This week! 5th Annual Invented at Duke Celebration

Duke’s Office for Translation & Commercialization (OTC) will hold its 2023 ‘Invented at Duke’ celebration next week on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, from 4:30-7 p.m. at Duke’s Penn Pavilion. Their annual showcase of Duke inventors and inventions will include remarks from Vincent Price, president of Duke University, Robin Rasor, head of OTC, and Jungsang Kim, the Schiciano Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and co-founder of IonQ.

Whether you’re already part of the Duke entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem or you’re just starting to explore how to bring your research out to the public – or perhaps you’re a member of the wider Triangle technology commercialization ecosystem – there will be something to learn and celebrate.

The event is free, but registration is required. You’ll receive an e-ticket to present at the door.  The attire is business casual. Parking can be found at the Bryan Center Parking Garage – follow event signs and tell the attendant at the entrance and exit that you’re there for Invented at Duke and you will receive free parking.

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• November is Native American Heritage Month; Men’s Health month, and Lung Cancer Awareness month.
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Nov. 28: Topic TBD, presenter TBD. 5 p.m., DN2002 or via Zoom.

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are uploaded to Warpwire. Recordings can be accessed via this link: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Nov. 29: Match Day Review. Zoom only.

Dec. 1: Stress Testing with Anna Lisa Chamis. Noon, Zoom only.

Call for Abstracts: Duke’s Annual Quality & Safety Conference

Save the date for Duke’s Annual Quality and Safety Conference scheduled for April 11 in the Trent Semans Center. Click here to view Abstract Guidelines. Abstracts are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted. Contact cynthia.gordon@duke.edu or kyle.rehder@duke.edu with any questions.

 

A&H Winterfest 2023

The dates for Winterfest Marketplace 2023, the annual holiday art show and sale hosted by Arts & Health at Duke, will take place across six Thursdays in November and December, local North Carolina-based artisans will display and sell their work to Duke Health employees, visitors and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital.

The event begins November 2 and runs until December 14. During Winterfest, art will be available for purchase on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans will include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

 

Duke Heart in the News:

November 17 — Duke University

Cardiology Advisor

Older Age, More Comorbidities Predict Favorable BMI Outcomes Among Youth

November 20 — Kunal Patel

Medical Product Outsourcing

Paragonix Achieves First-in-Human Use of BAROguard Donor Lung Preservation

November 20 — Manesh Patel

Medscape

Asundexian Phase 3 AF Study Halted for Lack of Efficacy

November 21 — Duke Raleigh Hospital

Triad City Beat

Violence against doctors and nurses is rising. A new NC law aims to help protect them

November 21 — Suresh Balu

STAT

How the shakeup at OpenAI underscores the need for AI standards in health care

Highlights of the week:

Happy Thanksgiving!

In advance of the Thanksgiving holiday, we hope each of you – whether you’re staying close to home or traveling to see loved ones — has a safe and wonderful holiday! Thank you for all you do each day to care for our patients and to advance our collective understanding of cardiovascular disease and treatments. We all contribute in myriad ways to the success of Duke Heart and to the relationships we have with our patients and our community. We are truly blessed to have a terrific team. Enjoy the holiday! 

 

 

AHA Scientific Sessions Recap

The American Heart Association’s Annual Scientific Sessions held in Philadelphia last weekend saw terrific representation by Duke faculty and fellows! We had two Late-Breaking sessions, 21 presentations, 19 moderated sessions, and more than 38 poster presentations by Duke team members. Impressive!

Our Duke team included the following authors, presenters, and moderators/discussants:

Kevin Thomas, Larry Jackson, Emily Obrien, Svati Shah, Jason Katz, Joseph Lerman, Brittany Zwischenberger, Nishant Shah, Schuyler Jones, Stephen Greene, Jennifer Rymer, Vishal Rao, Christopher Granger, Marat Fudim, William Kraus, Dennis Narcisse, Fawaz Alenezi, Leanna Ross, Melissa Daubert, Bradi Granger, Josephine Harrington, Andrew Landstrom, Jonathan Piccini, Manesh Patel, Sana Al-Khatib, Renato Lopes, Sudarshan Rajagopal, Camille Frazier-Mills, Sean Pokorney, Sarah Snow, Zak Loring, Robert Mentz, Jessica Duran, Dan Friedman, Balim Senman, and Alina Nicoara.

Highlights from across the weekend included:

Jason Katz, participated in the Contemporary Debates in STEMI. This education session was planned by the Committee on Scientific Sessions Program and was moderated by Chris Granger. The pro/con debates addressed controversial areas of management in ACS. Particularly, this debate addresses an important issue in ICU care. Katz reviewed a few case studies that suggest implementing a risk-based triage strategy could be a better alternative to the current strategy where patients with STEMI are typically admitted to the CICU.

In summary, the CICU admission decision for STEMI patients will continue to be based on individual judgment and traditional protocols rather than robust and evidence-based risk prediction models.

As part of a Saturday morning session examining controversies in high-risk PCI procedures focusing on calcium modification and bifurcation lesions, Jennifer Rymer participated in a debate on a one-stent vs. two-stent strategy for Bifurcation Disease, detailing scenarios in which a one-stent approach would be appropriate.

Rymer emphasized that her position in favor of a provisional, one-stent strategy should be the default for many, but not all bifurcation lesions.

Pointing first to a meta-analysis of nine randomized controlled trials co-authored by her debate opponent Margaret McEntegart, Rymer noted that the one-stent strategy showed reduced mortality compared to a two-stent strategy over a longer-term follow-up.

Rymer reviewed further evidence from the Nordic bifurcation study, EBC Two, and EBC main trials, among others, showing that the provisional single-stent strategy was more favorable than a two-stent strategy. Still, Rymer acknowledged that the one-stent strategy is not the definitive answer in every case.

“There’s significant evidence that a provisional stent strategy with often one stent can be a viable strategy for many bifurcation lesions,” Rymer said. “However, it’s key to assess and examine the anatomy and features of the bifurcation lesions, particularly within the left-main bifurcation. There isn’t always a one-size-fits-all approach in any aspect of medicine and certainly in these lesions there’s not.”

In rebuttal, McEntegart largely agreed that a one-stent strategy is best when treating simple bifurcations, while highlighting the exceptions — when treating more complex bifurcations — in which a two-stent strategy is a better approach.

As a discussant for the late-breaking science session “Heart Failure – VADS, Kids, and Money,” Stephen Greene shared details of recent heart failure trials and reflected on how patient outcomes can be improved by treating heart failure with a greater sense of urgency, more efficient trial enrollment, and a focus on implementation.

He shared examples of innovative trial designs such as the CHIEF-HF study and TRANSFORM-HF trial that reduced the burden on patients and sites and then emphasized a focus on implementation as the missing link in heart failure outcomes.

“Even when we know what is quote-unquote best for patients — we know the answer, what makes them live longer, stay out of the hospital, feel better, spend more time at home with their families — history has told us that we do not routinely act on this information,” Greene said. “And, as a result, the grim reality is that every day in this country, many patients with heart failure are dying and being hospitalized without ever having the opportunity to receive medicines definitively proven to prevent these events, despite the patient being eligible for them.”

Greene cited “persistent and pervasive” gaps in the use of guideline-directed medical therapy, including less than one in 10 eligible patients being discharged on quadruple medical therapy, and less than one in three eligible patients going home on triple therapy.

“While of course quadruple therapy should be our goal for HFrEF patients, just think how much better off it would be for the heart failure community if we did complete, equitable, and timely initiation of even just three generic heart failure medications,” Greene said.

“Traditional scientific investment in heart failure is largely focused on discovery science, and thankfully we’ve gotten enormous therapeutic advancements, but with these advancements comes the responsibility to get these therapies to our patients. … Regardless of any specific implementation strategy, there’s an overarching need to change the culture of care from therapeutic hesitancy to one of therapeutic urgency.”

Marat Fudim shared predictions for the future of treatment for patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) during an afternoon session packed with attendees eager to better understand what’s next. A more tailored approach with endo- and phenotyping, he said, is what will advance treatment for these patients, and machine learning may be able to help.

First outlining the need for more specialized research in HFpEF, Fudim noted that the subgroup makes up more than half the heart failure population and continues to grow. Yet the most helpful research for this subgroup has largely come by happenstance.

“In the past, we have applied therapeutic successes from the HFrEF space, which is much easier to diagnose and conceptualize, and applied that to the heart failure preserved ejection fraction space,” Fudim said. “We’ve really seen no positive trials over the two decades that we’ve been testing it until we started getting lucky with therapies which are actually primarily not cardio-centric — cardiometabolic drugs such as SGLT2s, GLP1RAs.”

But that approach will not be sustainable moving forward, he said.

“The future of HFpEF, I believe, will be looking as follows — we will have to do phenotyping,” Fudim said. “You can call it endotyping or phenotyping, and it will have to involve some form of superficial or deep phenotyping looking at clinical variables as well as biopsies or blood work that might tell us a little bit more about the patient, and then apply specific mechanisms of treatment to the diagnostically identified mechanism of pathology.”

Fudim provided the example of a case where spironolactone was found to be more therapeutically beneficial when matched to the proper phenotypical group.

“Certain groups will simply benefit more from certain interventions, even possible interventions found not to be significantly beneficial,” he said.

Machine learning is already applied with screening echocardiograms, Fudim noted, and could also be useful in identifying specific disease processes and matching with specific drugs, as well as identifying patients for future clinical trials where specific endotypes or phenotypes could be matched to a specific drug.

During an early morning Sunday session highlighting the pros and cons of controversial therapies for arrhythmia management in special and vulnerable patient populations, Sana Al-Khatib, shared evidence against catheter ablation for supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) in pregnant patients.

Following Kamala Tamirisa who took the “pro” position in favor of catheter ablation for SVT to avoid drug therapy, Al-Khatib argued that ablation should be avoided in these patients. Despite the presentation title, Al-Khatib cited guidelines and an expert consensus statement recommending that medications can and should be used to safely manage these patients. Al-Khatib went on to recommend that ablation could be considered either before or after pregnancy.

“Of course, I completely agree with my friend Dr. Tamirisa that we have to optimize safety, we have to make sure that we know about the properties of these medications that we use, when we can use them, when we cannot use them, dose them appropriately, see if we can get away with lower doses,” Al-Khatib said. “In fact, many of us have been able to manage pregnant women with lower doses of these medications.”

A lot has changed since the 2002 AFFIRM study showed a rhythm-control strategy offered no survival advantage over a rate-control strategy, according to Jonathan Piccini. On the contrary, data from more recent observational and randomized trials demonstrate that early initiation of rhythm control in patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib) can improve outcomes, Piccini said.

Presenting as part of a learning studio session on treating patients with AFib, Piccini reviewed recent evidence on early rhythm control such as the EAST-AFNET 4 trial, and discussed the applications of early rhythm control among different types of patients.

Which patients benefit most from early rhythm control?

“Some of the greatest benefit may be in patients who have more comorbidities,” Piccini said.

“I’d argue that we have good data that early rhythm control improves outcomes in persons with Afib and there appears to be a pretty durable 20% relative risk reduction in cardiovascular events. Persons with heart failure, left ventricular dysfunction, high degrees of comorbidity, and who have AFib progression or who are at risk for developing AFib progression are particularly important candidates for early rhythm control.”

Renato Lopes detailed how randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and real-world evidence can help inform clinical practice and shared examples of successful RCTs for atrial fibrillation.

“We always ask this question, what is the best type of study?” Lopes said. “Is it randomized trials, or is it the real-world type of study? …The right answer should be another question, ‘What is the question that I will answer?’ Because depending on the answer that I want to have from a clinical perspective, I might have different types of studies that might be the best.”

Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for determining treatment effect, he added. “I really need randomization to be able to define cause and effect relationships.”

However, for determining real-world application and understanding patterns of care — such as what dose people are using of a particular drug — real-world evidence studies are a better approach. So, a combination of the two types of studies is helpful to support clinical decisions, he continued.

Lopes summarized two pivotal trials on atrial fibrillation with Apixaban — ARISTOTLE and AVERROES. Both RCTs, ARISTOTLE compared Apixaban to Warfarin, and AVERROES compared Apixaban against Aspirin. ARISTOTLE was able to show that Apixaban was not only non-inferior to Warfarin, but superior to it in terms of reducing stroke, risk of bleeding, and all-cause mortality.

“We couldn’t believe when we saw that we were able to meet every single endpoint of the trial. That’s what we call a home run,” Lopes said. “To hit every single endpoint, preserving your alpha was a really unique moment.”

During a session on heart failure guidelines and implementation of therapies, Stephen Greene advocated for rapid titration of quadruple therapy for every eligible heart failure patient. Greene outlined the extreme risk associated with heart failure and emphasized the need for a more urgent therapeutic response. The status quo approach of introducing medications slowly using a one-move-at-a-time, serial, and selective approach, he said, has substantial risks associated as it can take 28 to 58 weeks before guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) is fully implemented at the targeted doses.

Simultaneous or rapid-sequence initiation of GDMT, on the other hand, treats heart failure with the urgency that it deserves, he said, and the clinical benefits become noticeable within days to weeks.

“If you delay therapy, even a couple of weeks in an eligible patient, you’re exposing them to excess clinical risk,” Greene said. “And when you remember that the benefits of all four of these drugs are completely additive to each other, and when you further remember that we’re talking about an extreme risk condition that needs all the help it can get, we need to fully take advantage of these medicines ASAP.”

In rebuttal, University of Kentucky Healthcare’s Craig Beavers presenting on behalf of Alanna Morris, argued that while the rapid titration approach is ideal, it wasn’t rooted in real-world thinking. Beavers outlined barriers to quadruple guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure, including lack of provider knowledge, side effects, administrative burden, Medicare prescription drug coverage, high out-of-pocket costs, and clinical inertia. He also outlined barriers to rapid titration therapy, including polypharmacy, side effects, financial toxicity, and patients failing to understand the rationale for changes.

Beavers concluded that while he agrees that an approach of rapid titration of quadruple therapy is needed for eligible heart failure patients, the current system is not set up to achieve it.

Presenting as part of an afternoon session on arrhythmia treatment, electrophysiologist Jonathan Piccini acknowledged that catheter ablation will not be needed by every patient. Most patients, though, will benefit from catheter ablation — “Absolutely yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt,” he said.

Piccini went on to outline reasons to ablate — it can suppress atrial fibrillation, improve quality of life, and reduce symptoms in patients.

“It’s not a cure, but it’s a highly effective form of suppressing active episodes of AFib,” Piccini said. “This forms the foundational pathophysiology and rationale on which catheter ablation is built.”

The EAST trial showed a 20 percent risk reduction in cardiovascular mortality, stroke, and hospitalization for both heart failure and coronary syndrome over five years, Piccini shared. In CABANA, the procedure showed similar risk reduction in deaths and cardiovascular hospitalization.

Like any procedure or drug prescribed in patients or intervention, applying it to the appropriate patients is critically linked to effectiveness and safety, he noted.

“Does every (AFib patient) need an ablation? No. But most people will probably benefit from ablation because at some point they will have symptoms. Or at some point they are going to benefit from rhythm control,” Piccini said. “EAST shows us that’s probably the beginning of their journey. … If we diagnosed it upfront and implemented early rhythm control, there is a very large role for catheter ablation in their health.”

In additional AHA news, Lesley Curtis, chief of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke was selected to receive the QCOR Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Heart Association’s Council on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research (QCOR). Congratulations, Lesley!

Jay Lusk, a resident physician at Duke, was named a finalist in the American Heart Association’s Lp(a) Data Challenge. His project, titled “A Random Survival Forest Model for Cardiovascular Risk Prediction from Electronic Health Record Data” was presented Nov. 12. Way to go, Jay!

Congratulations to all!

 

 

Duke Heart Faculty Among World’s Most Influential

Congratulations to Chris Granger, Renato Lopes, and Adrian Hernandez! They, along with 27 other Duke faculty members, made Clarivate‘s Most Highly Cited Scientists list of most cited researchers for 2023. Nearly 7,000 were named to this year’s list. Hernandez has been named to the list for each of the last five years, while Granger has been included each year since 2014. This year marks Lopes’ first appearance on the list. 

Data used to evaluate and select the honorees are procured from Clarivate’s Web of Science citation index and analysis by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information.

Nicely done!

ICYMI: Editorials in JAMA

Adrian Hernandez and Christopher Lindsell as well as Mike Felker and Joe Rogers have editorials in the November 11, 2023 online issue of JAMA. Hernandez, director of the DCRI and Lindsell, professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics are coauthors of The Future of Clinical Trials: Artificial to Augmented to Applied Intelligence, while Felker, professor of medicine in Cardiology and head of cardiovascular research at DCRI, and Rogers, president and CEO of the Texas Heart Institute are coauthors of Addition by Subtraction in Mechanical Cardiac Support. Both are worth checking out!

Duke Heart Grows by One!

We are thrilled to share Duke Heart’s latest addition with you. Miguel Yaport, one of our cardiac anesthesia fellows, and Allie Levin, a cardiology fellow, welcomed their daughter, Noa Yaport, on August 15th. Miguel and Allie ask for your forgiveness for this delayed announcement, and hope to make up for it with cute photos! 

Despite only being three months old, Noa can calculate EROAs like a pro (thanks to dad’s nightly TEE textbook reading with her, as depicted below). When she is not learning about valve pathologies, she loves tummy time, strolls in the neighborhood, and brunch with her co-fellow Willard.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome, Noa! Congratulations, Allie & Miguel!!!

 

Duke Heart Celebrates Nurse Practitioners

This past week, we celebrated National Nurse Practitioner Week (Nov. 12-18), in recognition of the NP profession and the many contributions NPs make to Duke Heart and Duke Health. There are more than 355,000 certified NPs in the U.S. caring for patients of all ages. We are deeply grateful for the efforts and contributions these vital Duke Heart team members make each and every day.

As highly skilled team members and healthcare leaders, NPs provide exceptional patient care in virtually all healthcare specialties and settings. NPs are pivotal in the health care delivery of Duke Heart and Duke Health, serving in critical roles throughout clinical care, education, health administration, leadership, and research.

A very special thank you to all NPs in Duke Heart and throughout Duke Health. We hope all of you had a great week!

 

5th Annual Invented at Duke Celebration

Duke’s Office for Translation & Commercialization (OTC) will hold its 2023 ‘Invented at Duke’ celebration next week on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, from 4:30-7 p.m. at Duke’s Penn Pavilion. Their annual showcase of Duke inventors and inventions will include remarks from Vincent Price, president of Duke University, Robin Rasor, head of OTC, and Jungsang Kim, the Schiciano Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and co-founder of IonQ.  

Whether you’re already part of the Duke entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem or you’re just starting to explore how to bring your research out to the public – or perhaps you’re a member of the wider Triangle technology commercialization ecosystem – there will be something to learn and celebrate.

The event is free, but registration is required. You’ll receive an e-ticket to present at the door. Attire is business casual. Parking can be found at the Bryan Center Parking Garage – follow event signs and tell the attendant at the entrance and exit that you’re there for Invented at Duke and you will receive free parking.

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• November is Native American Heritage Month; Men’s Health month, and Lung Cancer Awareness month.
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.

 

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Nov. 21: There will be no CGR this week.

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are uploaded to Warpwire. Recordings can be accessed via this link: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required. Our newest recording is of Dr. Holger Thiele of the Heart Center Leipzig at University of Leipzig, Germany, who presented Cardiogenic shock treatment: Between clinical practice and current evidence on Nov. 14.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Nov. 22: Journal Club with Ivan Nenadic Wood. DMP 2W96.

Nov. 24: No CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference today.

 Call for Abstracts: Duke’s Annual Quality & Safety Conference

Save the date for Duke’s Annual Quality and Safety Conference scheduled for April 11 in the Trent Semans Center. Click here to view Abstract Guidelines. Abstracts are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted. Contact cynthia.gordon@duke.edu or kyle.rehder@duke.edu with any questions.

 A&H Winterfest 2023

The dates for Winterfest Marketplace 2023, the annual holiday art show and sale hosted by Arts & Health at Duke, will take place across six Thursdays in November and December, local North Carolina-based artisans will display and sell their work to Duke Health employees, visitors and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital.

The event begins on November 2 and runs until December 14. During Winterfest, art will be available for purchase on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans will include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities, and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, and the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

  

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, on Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

Duke Heart in the News:

November 10 — Michael Pencina and Nicoleta Economou (Duke AI Health)

Healthcare IT News

Vanderbilt and Duke awarded $1.25M to study HCO AI maturity

November 11 — G. Michael Felker

Medpage Today

No Aspirin Needed After LVAD, ARIES-HM3 Trial Says

November 12 — Manesh Patel

Medpage Today

DOAC Cuts Stroke Risk From Subclinical Afib

November 12 — Manesh Patel and Jonathan Piccini

tctMD

AZALEA-TIMI 71: Bleeds Plunge With Abelacimab vs Rivaroxaban in AF, but Stroke Impact Unclear

November 13 — Renato Lopes

Mirage News (Au)

Apixaban Proves Effective in Stroke Prevention for Atrial Fibrillation Patients

November 13 — Renato Lopes

Drug Today Online

Apixaban is effective in preventing strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation detected by devices, finds study

November 13 — Susan Spratt (Endocrinology)

Today Show (NBC)

Ozempic sister drug Wegovy reduces risk of heart attack and stroke by 20%, study finds

November 13 — Renato Lopes

Medical Dialogues (In)

Apixaban may substantially prevent strokes in patients with device-detected AF

November 14 — Katherine Young (Pulmonary, Allergy & Critical Care)

Physician’s Weekly

Social Frailty Linked With Poorer Health in Patients With COPD

November 14 — Pamela Douglas

Healio/Cardiology Today

Pitavastatin lowers plaque volume, progression in lower-risk patients with HIV

November 15 — G. Michael Felker

MedTech Dive

Abbott study links aspirin-free regimen to better outcomes in heart pump patients

November 15 — Stephen Greene

HCP Live

Experts’ Perspectives: Top News in Cardiology for 2023

 

Highlights of the week:

Trifecta Weekend: AHA, Alumni, & Veteran’s Day

It’s AHA Scientific Sessions weekend and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to gather together once again in Philadelphia! We will send scientific updates and Duke Presentations next week as the meeting goes on until Monday.

It’s also Duke Alumni Weekend — we hope all those who were on campus this weekend had a great time.

Just as importantly, it’s Veteran’s Day weekend. As we see rising discord across the world, we continue to be humbled by the dedication, sacrifice, and commitment of our military members and their families. Our Duke Heart team has long valued the health and well-being of veterans in our region, and we’ll continue to do so for as long as they need us.

Please share photos and highlights with us from throughout the weekend by emailing anything you’d like to share in next weekend’s Pulse. You can send items via email to either Tracey Koepke or Manesh Patel (or both!).

 

Clark Joins Duke Heart Team

Duke Heart is pleased to welcome Brian Clark, MD to our team! Clark, a congenital heart surgeon, is the newest faculty member to join the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery’s Section of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery. Clark joined the Duke School of Medicine on Nov. 1 as a professor of surgery and of pediatrics and will transition into the roles of Executive Co-Director of the Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center and Director of the Congenital Cardiac Surgery Fellowship program over the coming months.

Clark was born into a military family in eastern North Carolina — his father was a pilot in the Marine Corps, and his mother was a school teacher. Their family moved often, with several stops on the East Coast, plus stays in California and Japan. He returned to complete high school in eastern North Carolina, and his parents have since retired in the New Bern area. 

With the support of a full-tuition college scholarship from the Air Force, Clark obtained his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then served on active duty as a civil engineering officer at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona. Following his military service, he again returned to NC to attend medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He stayed at UNC for the next step in training, completing a residency in general surgery as well as a two-year NIH-funded research fellowship.

He subsequently went on to complete fellowship training in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and then congenital cardiac surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2007, he joined the faculty at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where he ultimately became Professor of Pediatrics and Surgery and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery. During his 16-year tenure, the Penn State pediatric heart program was nationally recognized for superior patient outcomes. His research contributions focus on pediatric cardiopulmonary bypass, mechanical circulatory support, and neuroprotection. He has authored numerous publications in these areas and has served as a co-investigator on multiple long-term NIH grants for the development of pediatric and congenital heart assist devices. 

Brian and his wife Carol have two children, Jack and Kate. We are excited for them to be back home in NC! Please give them a warm welcome when you meet them.

 

AHA.23: Yibin Wang Receives AHA’s 2023 Basic Research Prize

Congratulations to Yibin Wang, PhD, FAHA, of Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and Duke University School of Medicine! The American Heart Association (AHA) presented its 2023 Basic Research Prize to Yang during the Presidential Session of the AHA’s Scientific Sessions.

Wang’s research focuses on the fundamental molecular and genetic mechanisms of cardiovascular physiology and cardiometabolic diseases. Under Wang’s leadership, his laboratory has developed innovative approaches to unlock the key molecules and pathways in which cells in mammals respond to pathological stress. His lab is credited with discovering new regulatory paradigms in molecular, epigenetic, and metabolic reprogramming during cardiac maturation and pathological remodeling. Wang’s work has directly contributed to many clinical studies and new trials for heart diseases.  During his career, his research has been funded by the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense, as well as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health in Singapore.

“Dr. Yibin Wang was selected for this prize because of his commitment to learning more about the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms behind cardiovascular disease,” said Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD, 2023-2024 volunteer President of the AHA. “Additionally, his research applies discoveries made about stress signaling networks to new methods of treatment for heart disease and the management of heart failure. Congratulations, Dr. Wang!”

Wang is a professor and director of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Signature Research Program of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders at Duke-NUS and a professor in medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. He is the scientific founder of a biotech start-up Ramino Bio and the principal investigator leading a 12-person research team that is developing new therapies based on what they have learned about cellular stress responses related to heart and metabolic diseases. He has written more than 270 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and two of his patents were licensed for evaluating and treating cardiometabolic disorders including heart failure, diabetes, and obesity.

“I’m truly humbled by this award from the Association, an organization that I am very fortunate to call home since the very beginning of my academic career,” said Wang. “However, this recognition is not for me alone but for all the team members and our collaborators over the years, who have devoted their talents and hard work in order to uncover new knowledge that can one day lead to new therapies for people with heart disease. I am very grateful to each of them and will use this award as a constant reminder that heart disease is still the number one killer and a challenge we must overcome with more research and better knowledge.”

Wang studied biochemistry at Fudan University during his undergraduate education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the State University of New York and a doctoral degree in cell biology and molecular genetics from Baylor College of Medicine. He completed a research fellowship in neurobiology at Scripps Research Institute and a second research fellowship in molecular cardiology at the University of California San Diego. Wang was previously recognized by the AHA with the Established Investigator Award in 2005 and the Thomas Smith Memorial Lectureship in 2016. He has served on several AHA leadership committees at the national level including as a member of the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Council.

Congratulations, Yibin!

 

Patel Delivers 2023 Stead Lecture:

Manesh Patel, MD, Richard Sean Stack, M.D. Distinguished Professor, delivered the Annual Eugene A. Stead Jr. Memorial Lecture as part of Medicine Grand Rounds on Friday morning, Nov. 10 in the Great Hall of the Trent Semans Center for Health Education at Duke. In case you missed his terrific lecture, Antithrombotic Therapy and Vascular Disease Management: Moving towards Precision CV care and the Duke Databank 3.0, you can watch a recording here.  

The lecture was very well attended and included FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD.

 

LEADS: Caring for Hospitalized Patients at the End-of-Life

Please join the Department of Medicine for their next LEADS: Caring for Hospitalized Patients at the End-of-Life, on November 14, 2023, from 12:15-1:00 p.m. in Duke North 2002 or via Zoom. 

Presenters for this session will be Neha Kayastha, MD, and Roberta Turner, MD, both assistant professors of medicine in Duke’s Division of General Internal Medicine.

Learning Objectives:

• Use the physical exam to provide a prognosis in a dying patient.
• Identify helpful ways to provide anticipatory guidance about difficult changes at the end-of-life.
• Develop a treatment approach to the common physical symptoms that arise at the end-of-life.
• Describe the hospice benefit and Duke-specific resources.

To learn more about the LEADS program and to see their current schedule, please visit: https://duke.is/y/vvrk.

 

Duke’s Annual Quality & Safety Conference Announced

Save the date for Duke’s Annual Quality and Safety Conference scheduled for April 11 in the Trent Semans Center. Click here to view Abstract Guidelines. Abstracts are due by 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted. Contact cynthia.gordon@duke.edu or kyle.rehder@duke.edu with any questions.

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• November is Native American Heritage Month; Men’s Health month, and Lung Cancer Awareness month.
• This week is National Nurse Practitioner Week (Nov. 12-18). Thank an NP for all they do!
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.

 

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Nov. 14: Cardiogenic shock treatment: Between clinical practice and current evidence with Holger Thiele of the Heart Center Leipzig at University of Leipzig, Germany. 5 p.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are uploaded to Warpwire. Recordings can be accessed via this link: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required. Our newest recording is of Dr. Sandra Ofori of McMaster University who presented to us Nov. 8 on Perioperative Smoking Cessation.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Conference information was not provided for the coming week ahead of publications. We’ll add dates/times as they are received. Sorry for any inconvenience.

2023 Barbara Hertzberg Women’s Health Lectureship

Nov. 16: Coronary Artery Disease in Women: Where are we in 2023? with Leslee J. Shaw, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. 7:30 a.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

THIS WEEK! 15^th Annual Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium

The 15^th annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium will be held this week on Friday, November 17^th at the Durham Convention Center. Faculty directors will be H. James Ford, MD, director of the PH program at UNC, and Terry Fortin, MD, co-director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at Duke. Registration is now open: https://duke.is/9/7rs5. Please join us!

A&H Winterfest 2023

The dates for Winterfest Marketplace 2023, the annual holiday art show and sale hosted by Arts & Health at Duke, will take place across six Thursdays in November and December, local North Carolina-based artisans will display and sell their work to Duke Health employees, visitors and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital. 

The event begins on November 2 and runs until December 14. During Winterfest, art will be available for purchase on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans will include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities, and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, and the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

 

5th Annual Invented at Duke Celebration

Duke’s Office for Translation & Commercialization (OTC) invites you to the 2023 ‘Invented at Duke’ celebration, their annual showcase of Duke inventors and inventions. This year, the event will take place on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at Duke’s beautiful Penn Pavilion.

Remarks are expected from Vincent Price, president of Duke University; Robin Rasor, head of OTC; and Jungsang Kim, the Schiciano Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, co-founder of IonQ and a strong supporter of the translation and commercialization community on campus.

The remainder of the event will feature booths hosted by Duke inventors, drinks and hors d’oeuvres, gifts for Duke inventors who register and attend, and more. The celebration will showcase innovations and companies that have not only been started by Duke faculty and students but have also been supported through funding and mentoring by a variety of Duke translational funds, incubators, and more.

Whether you’re already part of the Duke entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem or you’re just starting to explore how to bring your research out to the public – or perhaps you’re a member of the wider Triangle technology commercialization ecosystem – there will be something to learn and celebrate.

Attire: business casual.

Parking: at the Bryan Center Parking Garage – follow event signs and tell the attendant at the entrance and exit that you’re there for Invented at Duke and you will receive free parking.

The event is free, but registration is required. You’ll receive an e-ticket to present at the door.

  

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, on Wednesdays, will be considered for weekend inclusion.

Duke Heart in the News:

November 4 — Renato Lopes

Healio/Nephrology

Lower rates of access thrombosis for patients with CKD who receive daprodustat vs. EPO

November 4 — Robert Lefkowitz

Spectrum News Charlotte  **(*clip begins @ 04:31:34)

Researcher marks 50 years of science (updates 10/30 story)

November 5 — Joseph Turek

CBS-17 (Raleigh-Durham)

NC baby gets new heart, donates valves to another in state’s 1st domino partial heart transplant at Duke

Fox-8/WGHP (Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem)

North Carolina baby gets new heart, donates valves to another in state’s 1st domino partial heart transplant at Duke

Yahoo.com

NC baby gets new heart in state’s 1st domino partial heart transplant at Duke

November 6 — Duke Raleigh Hospital

WUNC, 91.5/NC Public Radio

Cursed at. Shoved. Punched. Bitten. Violence against doctors and nurses is rising. A new N.C. law aims to help protect them.

November 6 — DUH & Duke Raleigh

Becker’s Clinical Leadership

56 US hospitals honored for surgical patient care

November 7 — Duke Health

Triangle Business Journal*

Duke Health, WakeMed shine as NC stays among top states for hospital safety

*subscription required; for a PDF, contact Tracey

November 7 — Yuichiro Yano (Family Medicine/Community Health)

Cardiovascular Business

ChatGPT tackles hypertension: Popular AI model a helpful resource for patients with high blood pressure

November 9 — Nishant Shah

NBC News

What to know about Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s new weight loss drug

*also carried by NBC News affiliates, Yahoo, MSN & AOL.com News, and Chiang Rai News (China)

November 10 — Nishant Shah

NBC Today Show

Weight loss drug Zepbound approved by FDA: Woman who lost 123 pounds shares story

November 10 — Zubin Eapen

DotMed Healthcare Business News

One company’s approach to advancing wearable defibrillators

Chief’s message:

Hope you all are having a good weekend. For those of you who didn’t see it – NY Times highlighted 36 hours in Durham today.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/02/travel/things-to-do-durham-nc.html

Highlights of the week:

This week: AHA Scientific Sessions in Philly!

We know a lot of you will be traveling to Philadelphia this week to attend and perhaps present at the 2023 American Heart Association’s Annual Scientific Sessions. We hope you’ll share photos and highlights with us from throughout the weekend. Please email photos and write-ups on anything you’d like to share in an upcoming issue of Pulse by sending items via email to either Tracey Koepke or Manesh Patel (or both!).

Annual Duke Reception at AHA Scientific Sessions

If you’ll be attending the 2023 AHA Scientific Sessions later this week, please join us at the Duke Annual Reception! 

When: Saturday, November 11 from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Where: Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market Street. Level 4, Franklin Hall 8.

Sponsors: Duke Clinical Research Institute, Duke Cardiology, Duke Heart Center

Questions?:  Please email Elizabeth.evans@duke.edu or willette.wilkins@duke.edu

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Duke Shines at 3^rd Annual NYU Langone Critical Care Symposium

The 3^rd Annual NYU Langone Critical Care Cardiology Symposium was held two weekends ago (October 20-21, 2023) in New York City. Duke had outstanding representation there – including fellows Willard Applefeld and Balim Senman, as well as nurse practitioner and School of Nursing faculty member, Callie Tennyson, DNP, who each were invited faculty on the symposium. 

Senman also served on the symposium’s planning committee and was selected as overall “Best Abstract” winner in the Research Category (an award endorsed by the CardioNerds program). Additionally, Garima Dahiya – one of the current Critical Care Cardiology trainees at Duke – was selected as a “Best Abstract” winner in the Quality Improvement Category. Finally, Dr. Cherylee Chang – Professor of Neurology and Division Chief of Neurocritical Care here at Duke – also participated as an invited faculty member and was instrumental in helping to cultivate and champion the multidisciplinary focus of the symposium.

“It was great to see Duke’s influence on this maturing discipline,” said Jason Katz, MD, advanced heart failure and critical care specialist. Katz is a long-time champion of cardiology critical care training and support. You can read an interview he did for the ACC/Cardiology Magazine here.

Way to go, Willard, Balim, and Callie!

 

Mario Foundation Awardees Profiled by DOM

Back in August, we shared the great news that advanced heart failure and transplant fellow, Josephine Harrington, MD, won a 2023 Mario Foundation Award. Harrington and her fellow awardees were profiled this past week in the Department of Medicine’s This Week in Medicine. We wanted to share her profile here with you:

Josephine Harrington, MD

Josephine Harrington, MD, is an advanced heart failure and transplant fellow. She attended medical school at the University of Massachusetts Worcester before going to the University of Texas Southwestern for her residency. Dr. Harrington completed her cardiology training at Duke, including two years at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) on a T32 grant. Her clinical and research interests are focused on identifying better methods to care for patients with heart failure and obesity. 

As a fellow, Dr. Harrington piloted a clinic to provide care for patients whose body mass index (BMI) was a barrier to heart transplant; multiple of her patients have gone on to successfully lose weight and receive heart transplants. Her research has similarly focused on understanding the relationship between obesity and markers of heart failure severity, and on the impact of weight loss in patients with heart failure and obesity. She is an avid hiker and loves good food and bad puns. Her winning project is: The Relationship Between Obesity, Weight Loss and Heart Failure Severity.

Q: Please describe your most significant research work and why you are excited about it. 

Harrington: Despite the fact that obesity is the single largest risk factor for heart failure, we know shockingly little about the ways that excess body weight impact heart failure physiology, or how intentional weight loss might ameliorate those relationships. I am leveraging the incredibly rich data that already exist at Duke to establish baseline relationships between obesity and heart failure, and to explore the impact of intentional weight loss on changes in those relationships. Intentional weight loss may well represent a new “pillar” for heart failure management among patients with obesity, and these data will help to establish the potential for weight loss to impact heart failure severity in this population. 

Q: What has a Duke School of Medicine education meant to you in preparing for your career as a physician and/or researcher? 

Harrington: Duke is truly unparalleled when it comes to resources and chances for collaboration and research. Rarely a week goes by where I don’t realize that there is yet another opportunity to further a research question or to leverage a dataset to inform an investigation. 

Q: We live in a fascinating time for moving medicine forward.  How do you foresee contributing to medicine that will improve the health and well-being for all populations? 

Harrington: The median BMI in the United States continues to climb, and a “normal” BMI is no longer the most prevalent BMI category. There is a tremendous need to improve care for patients with obesity and comorbid diseases, especially heart disease, which remains the number 1 comorbidity of patients with obesity. I hope that my work will directly inform care for patients with obesity and heart failure, and will help to set new standards in management for this vulnerable population. 

To read the full article, which includes a similar Q&A with Harrington’s fellow awardees, Judith B. Vick, MD MPH, fellow in general internal medicine, and Naseem Alavian, MD, MPH, a fellow in infectious diseases, please visit this link.

Shout-outs to Suleimon & Arps!

We received two notes this week from Dr. Daniella Zipkin, professor of medicine in General Internal Medicine, with feedback on two of our fellows who held teaching sessions last spring for GIM residents. Belal Suleimon taught CH/PO AHD- LTC Basics, and Kelly Arps taught CH/PO AHD Atrial fibrillation.

“Belal, I’m writing to share feedback from your teaching session last spring with the residents. They thought your session was outstanding! I’m especially grateful when fellows step up to teach, thank you so much for bringing your energy to this series!”     

And to Arps, she wrote:

“Hello Kelly, I’m writing to share feedback from your session last spring. Your teaching continues to be outstanding and well received!! Thank you so much for teaching in this series!” — Take care, Dani

Nicely done, Belal and Kelly!

 

 

 

Kudos to Hughes & Danielle!

We also received a terrific note this week regarding cardiology fellow Seamus Hughes that was shared with Anna Lisa Chamis.

“Hi! My name is Kami Arulraja and I’m one of the CCM fellows and am in the MICU tonight and needed to float a PA catheter, and called the CCU fellow – Seamus who came to help and truly went above and beyond. Seamus was patient and an excellent teacher; we really appreciate Seamus and the CCU charge nurse Danielle who came to help! Just wanted to let you know about one of your excellent fellows!” — Kami Arulraja, MD – PGY6, Critical Care Medicine, Emergency Medicine

Way to go, Seamus and Danielle!

 

 

 

Lefkowitz Celebration Video Now Available

For those who were unable to attend the 50^th anniversary celebration dinner for Dr. Bob Lefkowitz last month, we now have access to a video from the evening speaking presentations. Link to video. Passcode: rjl50.  Enjoy!

Did You Know? List of Duke AED Locations

Did you know there is an online list of all known/registered AED locations on the Duke University & Health System campus? Read a recent article about this from Duke Today.

To bypass the article and go directly to the site with AED locations, go here. The list is compiled and maintained by Duke Emergency Management. You can also register new AED’s (or ones not listed there) through a link on that page.

Final Call: Flu Vaccinations!

The Duke Health deadline for all employees to be vaccinated for the flu is 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7. A list of all locations, dates, times for flu vaccination, and a link to the required screening survey can be found on Duke’s Fight the Flu website. And, if you have any questions about the flu vaccine you can email either StopTheFlu@duke.edu or  EOHWflu@dm.duke.edu.

Don’t forget — masking is highly recommended when providing clinical care. Some units now require masking due to COVID outbreaks — including all Heart Center inpatient and procedural units. Please pay attention to signage on our units and elsewhere within the hospital.

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• November is Native American Heritage Month; Men’s Health month, and Lung Cancer Awareness month.
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.
• A recording of the latest (10/24) DUHS Leadership Town Hall is now available.

Medicine Grand Rounds

Annual Stead Lecture:

Nov. 10: Antithrombotic therapy and Vascular disease management: Moving towards precision CV care and the Duke Databank 3.0 with Manesh Patel. 8 a.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

Cardiology Grand Rounds

(Wednesday) Nov. 8: Perioperative Smoking Cessation with Sandra Ofori of McMaster University. 5 p.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

Nov. 14: Cardiogenic shock treatment: Between clinical practice and current evidence with Holger Thiele of the Heart Center Leipzig at University of Leipzig, Germany. 5 p.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

All 2023 Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are uploaded to Warpwire. Recordings can be accessed via this link: https://duke.is/DukeCGR; NET ID and password required.

 

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Nov. 8: Peripheral Vascular Disease – Aorta with Jennifer Rymer. In person only. Noon, DMP 2W96.

Nov. 10: EP Case Presentation with Jessica Regan and Jonathan Hanna. Zoom only. Noon.

2023 Barbara Hertzberg Women’s Health Lectureship

Nov. 16: Coronary Artery Disease in Women: Where are we in 2023? with Leslee J. Shaw, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. 7:30 a.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

15^th Annual Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium

The 15^th annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium will be held on Friday, November 17^th at the Durham Convention Center. Faculty directors will be H. James Ford, MD, director of the PH program at UNC, and Terry Fortin, MD, co-director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at Duke. Registration is now open: https://duke.is/9/7rs5. Please join us!

 

A&H Winterfest 2023

The dates for Winterfest Marketplace 2023, the annual holiday art show and sale hosted by Arts & Health at Duke, will take place across six Thursdays in November and December, local North Carolina-based artisans will display and sell their work to Duke Health employees, visitors and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital.

The event begins November 2 and runs until December 14. During Winterfest, art will be available for purchase on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans will include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

 

5th Annual Invented at Duke Celebration

Duke’s Office for Translation & Commercialization (OTC) invites you to the 2023 ‘Invented at Duke’ celebration, their annual showcase of Duke inventors and inventions. This year, the event will take place on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, from 4:30-7 p.m. at Duke’s beautiful Penn Pavilion.

Remarks are expected from Vincent Price, president of Duke University; Robin Rasor, head of OTC; and Jungsang Kim, the Schiciano Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, co-founder of IonQ and a strong supporter of the translation and commercialization community on campus.

The remainder of the event will feature booths hosted by Duke inventors, drinks and hors d’oeuvres, gifts for Duke inventors who register and attend, and more. The celebration will showcase innovations and companies that have not only been started by Duke faculty and students, but have also been supported through funding and mentoring by a variety of Duke translational funds, incubators, and more.

Whether you’re already part of the Duke entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem or you’re just starting to explore how to bring your research out to the public – or perhaps you’re a member of the wider Triangle technology commercialization ecosystem – there will be something to learn and celebrate.

Attire: business casual.

Parking: at the Bryan Center Parking Garage – follow event signs and tell the attendant on entrance and exit that you’re there for Invented at Duke and you will receive free parking.

The event is free, but registration is required. You’ll receive an e-ticket to present at the door.

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

 

Duke Heart in the News:

October 26 — Joe Turek and Michael Carboni

PBS North Carolina

Sci NC: Cutting-Edge Science

https://duke.is/r/35vg

October 30 — Robert Lefkowitz

Spectrum News

‘What would Bob do?’: Researcher reflects on 50 years of scientific breakthroughs

https://duke.is/z/mj8d

October 30 — Jennifer Rymer

Medscape

Drug-Eluting Resorbable Scaffold Beats Angioplasty for Infrapopliteal Artery Disease

https://duke.is/4/dzkx

October 31 — Jennifer Rymer

espanol.news (Spain)

El andamio reabsorbible supera a la angioplastia en CLTI debajo de la rodilla

https://duke.is/9/t2f6

October 31 — Jennifer Rymer

MDEdge.com/Cardiology News

Drug-eluting resorbable scaffold beats angioplasty for infrapopliteal artery disease

https://duke.is/2/gche

October 31 — Sana Al-Khatib

Healio

Q&A: Patient trust required before AI-aided remote interventions can be implemented

https://duke.is/g/9edm

November 1 — Harry Severance

epmonthly.com

Top Disruptors within Our Healthcare Systems Part 2

https://duke.is/p/rpyf

November 1 — Duke University Hospital

Becker’s Hospital Review

Top 50 hospitals for cardiac surgery: Healthgrades

https://duke.is/v/fq2k

Highlights of the week:

Leadership Change, Duke Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

Late last week, Dr. Allan Kirk, the David C. Sabiston, Jr. Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Duke Department of Surgery announced a leadership change within the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery. Kirk announced that Dr. Edward P. Chen will leave the role of division chief, a position he has held since January 2021, and will remain on faculty.

During this time Chen has overseen a multitude of accomplishments throughout the division. Notably, the division has enjoyed programmatic growth in its capacity to perform robotic surgery at both Duke University Hospital (DUH) and Duke Raleigh Hospital. The ability to perform TAVR and EP laser lead extractions was expanded to include both the OR and catheterization lab as well as the soon-to-be-constructed 3^rd hybrid room at DUH. The capacity to perform open procedures was also increased.

Despite some faculty turnover, nine new faculty members were recruited to join the division – three in thoracic surgery, three in congenital, and one in adult cardiac surgery, plus a new surgeon based in Lumberton and a new PhD scientist based at Duke. Even with the well-known challenges of COVID, numerous staffing shortages and changes within support teams such as the OR staff, Perfusion Services, and the ICU, and the supply chain issues plaguing much of the U.S. healthcare industry, Duke’s CT surgical volumes continued to rise and both outcomes and quality measures remained top-rated.

Under Chen’s leadership, a reemphasis was placed on Duke’s tripartite academic mission. Within the CTS training programs, Chen oversaw efforts to increase the diversity of residents, reinforced attracting top candidates to Duke, and launched an annual welcome picnic for new trainees and current faculty to facilitate introductions and relationship building throughout the division.

A number of staff support positions were also created to enhance the team’s growth and efficacy – particularly within research, congenital, and general thoracic surgery. The division also saw increased local and national news coverage for transplantation stories across both pediatric and adult cases, and a number of faculty earned achievement awards. Recognized faculty include Betty Tong (the WTS/STS Extraordinary Women in Cardiothoracic Surgery Award), Joe Turek and Peter Smith (Duke Presidential Awards), Carmelo Milano (Palumbo Award), and Tommy D’Amico (Triangle Business Journal Surgeon of the Year), and Chen ensured continuing support of Duke Heart in Honduras mission trips. Additionally, the pediatric program achieved a #2 ranking in USNWR.

We are deeply grateful for the leadership and efforts of Dr. Chen over the past several years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Carmelo Milano named Division Chief Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

Kirk has named Dr. Carmelo Milano, professor of surgery and the Joseph W. and Dorothy W. Beard Distinguished Professor of Experimental Surgery, as the new division chief. Milano has most recently served as chief of the Section of Adult Cardiac Surgery and surgical director of the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) Program within the division.

“I am grateful to Dr. Milano for his willingness to step into this important leadership role,” says Allan D. Kirk, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Surgery. “Carmelo is a proven leader, a skilled investigator, and a luminary surgeon who has helped guide the Duke heart transplant program to a position of international prominence, perennially among the top programs nationally.”

Dr. Milano is a Professor of Surgery and Joseph W. and Dorothy W. Beard Distinguished Professor of Experimental Surgery. He has been serving as chief of the Section of Adult Cardiac Surgery, and surgical director of the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) Program.

“It gives me great pride to be asked to lead such a talented group of individuals,” says Dr. Milano. “It is our mission to provide the highest level of care, innovation, and excellence. Together, we will strive for breakthroughs in patient care, research, and education, setting new standards of excellence in the field.”

Dr. Milano has overseen increased utilization of mechanical support devices for bridging patients with advanced heart failure. The mechanical circulatory support program he developed at Duke has treated more than 1,500 patients with LVAD devices or mechanical hearts. In addition to his clinical and research activities, he is an influential mentor for cardiac surgical trainees.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Milano on his appointment to Chief of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery.

Relocation of DN 2200/Opening of 7200 Update

Duke University Hospital has a master plan to increase the capacity of Emergency Department beds. As a result, several changes occurred in October involving the relocation of two units.  Duke North 2200 closed on October 25 and the Emergency Department relocated from Duke North 7200 and ED C Pod to 2200 on October 27 for a gain of 8 beds for their department.

On October 30, 8 Cardiology Step-Down beds will open on 7200 (7201-7208) for a total of 24 Cardiology Step-Down beds between 3200 and 7200. The move will allow Heart Services to be located on the 3rd and 7th floors in Duke North.

Gratitude for APPs!

“I wanted to send a note of gratitude regarding our stellar cardiology APP team. I finished a week of rounding and am extraordinarily grateful for the team that Diane Sauro has built over the years. A shining example was Saturday morning, when we discharged an EP service record of 17 patients. Without the thoughtful team assignments and tireless efforts from Sas, Mike Towery, Janny Sweetow, and Deborah Zimmerman (who discharged a personal best of 9 patients!), this wouldn’t have been possible. This extraordinary work made a huge difference for patients, our hospital, and the exhausted attending.” — Daniel J. Friedman, MD, FACC, cardiac electrophysiology

Way to go, APPs!

Kudos to Andreae & Stephens!

We received several notes regarding Andrew Andreae and Allen Stephens this week and wanted to share them with Pulse readers. 

“I wanted to express my gratitude to Andrew Andreae, MD, and Allen Stephens, PA-C. We had a patient in clinic this week who needed direct admission. Allen graciously went and saw the patient; Andrew worked remotely calling bed control, the attending on the service, and spoke with the patient to make sure they were fully informed and comfortable with the next steps. It felt like we all worked seamlessly together to take care of the patient. A huge thank you to Andrew and Allen in particular for providing excellent patient care and going above and beyond!” — Emily Deason, Cardiac Sonographer II, Cardiac Diagnostic Unit

“I wanted to pass along kudos to Andrew Andreae, CDU fellow, who was instrumental in facilitating a direct admission for a patient seen in clinic. Very helpful to have him coordinate the admission.” – Allen Stephens, MHS, PA-C, APP Team Lead

“Andrew has done a great job in the echo lab this month and has taken great care of our patients.  This is just another small example of Andrew going the extra mile!” — Anita Kelsey, MD

Awesome work, Andrew and Allen – we are so fortunate to have you on our team!

Marquis-Gravel, Finalist for 2023 Linnemeier

Congratulations to interventionalist Guillaume Marquis-Gravel, MD of Duke Health and the Montreal Heart Institute! He was named one of four finalists for the 2023 TCT Thomas J. Linnemeier Spirit of Interventional Cardiology Young Investigator Award.

The award, announced on Thursday morning, was presented to (and will be shared by) Simone Biscaglia, MD, of Ferrara University Hospital, Ferrara, Italy, and Jaffar M. Khan, BM, BCh, PhD of St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, NY. The presentation was made during the Cardiovascular Research Foundation’s TCT Annual Scientific Symposium held Oct. 23-26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  We were fortunate to have Jennifer Rymer, MD from our Faculty win this award last year.

Terrific recognition, Guillaume!

 

DOM Research Retreat for Fellows & Early Career Faculty

The annual Department of Medicine (DOM) Research Retreat for Fellows and Early Career Faculty will occur on Wednesday, November 1, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the J.B. Duke Hotel, Banquet Hall.

This event is targeted towards research-oriented fellows and early career faculty.

Attendees will:

• Learn about DOM research resources, including grant submission support with DOMRA and clinical research support with DOM CRU.
• Hear from diverse research faculty, who will share their experiences developing a research focus, finding mentors, and successfully navigating a K grant submission.
• Network with other researchers, including fellows, faculty, and leaders across DOM.
• Connect with colleagues while enjoying dinner.

The retreat is an excellent opportunity for you to connect, learn more about our strategic research plan and how to thrive as a member of the DOM research community.

For questions regarding the research retreat, contact Saini Pillai, MBA. (Registration deadline has passed, but there may still be room).

Flu Vaccinations!

Duke Health requires all employees to be vaccinated by 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7 – that’s next week! Duke offers free flu vaccinations in a variety of convenient locations. There is a screening survey available online that should be filled out within 48 hours of getting the vaccine at Duke; this step will save you time at the walk-in vaccination venue.

A list of all locations, dates, and times for flu vaccination, and a link to the required screening survey can be found on Duke’s Fight the Flu website. And, if you have any questions about the flu vaccine you can email either StopTheFlu@duke.edu or EOHWflu@dm.duke.edu.

Don’t forget that masking is highly recommended when providing clinical care. Some units now require masking due to COVID outbreaks — including all Heart Center inpatient and procedural units. Please pay attention to signage on our units and elsewhere within the hospital.

A&H Winterfest 2023

Arts & Health at Duke announced this week the dates for Winterfest Marketplace 2023, their annual holiday art show and sale. Across six Thursdays in November and December, local North Carolina-based artisans will display and sell their work to Duke Health employees, visitors, and patients in the main concourse of Duke Hospital.

The event begins on November 2 and runs until December 14. During Winterfest, art will be available for purchase on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Featured artisans will include Beth Ann Taylor, Chapel Hill Woodturners, Bonnie Toney, and Justin Leitner.

A portion of the proceeds from Winterfest will go back to Arts & Health at Duke, which provides support to patients through music, visual art activities, and journaling. This is a great opportunity to support local artists, the Arts & Health programming at Duke Health, and to score some beautiful holiday gifts for loved ones!

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• November is Native American Heritage Month.
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.
• A recording of the latest (10/24) DUHS Leadership Town Hall is now available.

 

CGR Recordings Now in Warpwire

All 2023 Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are now uploaded to Duke Warpwire. Accessing them requires your NET ID. If you have any trouble finding or playing any of the recordings, please contact Tracey Koepke, and as always, if you have suggestions for a CGR topic or speaker, please contact Jenn Rymer and Nishant Shah. The link to access the recordings is https://duke.is/DukeCGR. We will include this each week here in Pulse.

 

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Oct. 31: No CGR today.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Nov. 1: Understanding the Valvular Heart Disease Guidelines with Thomas Bashore. In person only. Noon, DMP 2W96.

Nov. 3: EKG Review with Thomas Bashore. Zoom only. Noon.

2023 Barbara Hertzberg Women’s Health Lectureship

Nov. 16: Coronary Artery Disease in Women: Where are we in 2023? with Leslee J. Shaw, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. 7:30 a.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

Call for Applications: 2024 Leadership Programs

The Office for Faculty announced this week the call for applications for their 2024 Leadership Programs, including ADVANCE-UP, ALICE, DCLP, and LEADER. Click here to learn more. Applications are due Nov. 3.

DIHI Innovation RFA 2024

The Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI) has announced its next annual Request for Application (RFA) for selecting and implementing innovative solutions in our clinical enterprise. The proposals should address actual and important problems encountered by care providers, patients, and their loved ones, and represent urgent health challenges nationally.

For the 2024 funding cycle, they are specifically interested in the following topic: 

Generative AI & Large Language Models: AI solutions to improve staff and clinician efficiency, patient journey and outcomes

Please visit the Innovation RFA web page for additional information, to download an info packet, and to see the timeline for 2024 projects. The deadline for submitting applications is November 3, 2023.

All proposals are required to have a DUHS operational lead as a co-sponsor to be accepted for review.

If the DIHI team can be of any assistance to you in the formulation of ideas or connections, please contact Suresh Balu. The DIHI team looks forward to your innovative solutions!

 

Coming Up: 15^th Annual Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium

The 15^th annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium will be held on Friday, November 17^th at the Durham Convention Center. Faculty directors will be H. James Ford, MD, director of the PH program at UNC, and Terry Fortin, MD, co-director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at Duke. Registration is now open: https://duke.is/9/7rs5. Please join us!

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, on Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

 

Duke Heart in the News:

September 20 — Harry Severance

Emergency Physicians Monthly

Top Disruptors within Our Healthcare Systems

https://duke.is/5/a85g

October 20 — Craig Albanese

Becker’s Hospital Review

How Duke Health is bolstering its ‘talentforce’

https://duke.is/n/faum

October 20 — Jonathan Piccini

tctMD

SAVR 5-Year Survival Tops 92% in Low-Risk Patients: STS Registry

https://duke.is/v/e3h4

October 22 — Robert Mentz

Healio

In HF hospitalization, benefits of sacubitril/valsartan largest in LVEF below normal

https://duke.is/2/r2j6

October 23 — Robert Mentz

HCP Live

Anemia Contributes to Exercise Intolerance in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction, Study Finds

https://duke.is/g/8a2b

October 23 — Karen Alexander

The Daily of Case Western Reserve University

Could taking a commonly used heart medication prevent dementia?

Mandel School’s Duncan Mayer explores nonprofit location and density

 

October 24 — Robert Mentz

PBS North Carolina

New FDA Research Center Is Coming to UNC & Duke

https://duke.is/m/5a3a

October 25 — Duke University Hospital

Becker’s Hospital Review

The best hospital in each state, per Newsweek

https://duke.is/8/h8fq

October 26 — Duke Health (Cardiology)

Becker’s Hospital Review

26 elite hospitals, per patients and providers

https://duke.is/p/n8kv

Chief’s message:

We hope you all had some time with family and friends this weekend.  We are nearing the end of the recruitment season for our cardiology fellows and are reminded of the fall season upon us.  This week we also have several of those in our group dealing with either family or individual illnesses, please keep them in your thoughts.

Highlights of the week:

Duke Heart Network Update

Laurie Van Camp, RN, MSN, associate clinical director of the Duke Heart Network (DHN), recently guided three nursing teams through submitting abstracts to the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Quality Summit. All three abstracts were accepted for ePoster session. Thanks to a Duke Friends of Nursing Stipend Award, Van Camp was able to travel to Orlando and represented the Frye Regional Medical Center team at their ePoster. 

Within her DHN role, Van Camp is responsible for working with Duke Heart affiliate hospitals on cardiovascular quality, program development, and educational initiatives. Over the last 18 months, she has guided three performance teams at three separate hospital affiliates through important performance improvement (PI) work. These efforts have led to significant improvement in patient outcomes in the areas of cardiac rehabilitation after myocardial infarction and the rate of post-procedural acute kidney injury. 

The accepted abstracts were:

“Mission to Reduce Contrast-Induced Acute Kidney Injury in Cardiac Patients” by the team at Sovah-Martinsville.

“When Humans and Technology Collide: Improving Cardiac Rehabilitation Referral” by the team at Conway Medical Center.

“Challenging the Norm: A Multidisciplinary Journey to Reduce Acute Kidney Injury” by the team at Frye Regional Medical Center.

We’re happy to report that for the individuals on the affiliate PI teams, the ACC abstract development, submission process, and poster creation have helped foster an important sense of pride, professionalism, and ownership of the CV-quality work they are engaged in daily within their respective institutions.

Well done, Laurie & Duke Heart Network!

 

Ohman Receives Honorary Fellowship to ICS

Congratulations to Magnus Ohman! He has been named an honorary fellow of the Irish Cardiac Society. The honor was awarded last week during the Irish Cardiac Society’s 74th Annual Scientific Meeting & AGM, held October 12-14 at the Killashee House Hotel in Kildare. 

The ICS, which was established in 1949, awards honorary fellowship (FICS) in recognition of an honoree’s dedication to the training of physicians and cardiologists. He joins prior notables to receive the honor, including Jim Crowley (former President of the Irish Cardiac Society); Conor O’Shea; Peter Conlon, and Robert Kelly.

Magnus says the opportunity allowed him to catch up with former co-worker Professor Hannah McGee, (who also received the honorary FICS) currently the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Ohman’s alma mater. He and McGee worked together on the first Cardiac Rehabilitation program in Ireland.

He is shown here with Dr. Jim Crowley, and again with Hannah McGee (left) and Barbra Dalton, the permanent secretary of the Irish Cardiac Society (and a fellow RCSI graduate).

Well-deserved, Magnus!

 

PWIM + WIN: Promotion Pathways Symposium

The Duke DOM’s Program for Women in Internal Medicine (PWIM) joins Duke Neurology’s Women in Neurology (WIN) for a special joint symposium to discuss and reflect on the promotion pathways for women faculty and faculty of color at Duke. This event will occur on Monday, October 23, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Trent Semans Center.

The symposium will feature a panel discussion representing division chiefs and promotion and tenure committee members, including:

• Manesh Patel, MD, Chief, Cardiology
• Loretta Que, MD, Chief, Pulmonary, Allergy & Critical Care Medicine
• Karen Welty-Wolf, MD, Medicine APT Committee
• Mitch Heflin, MD, Medicine APT Committee
• Janice Massey, MD, Neurology APT Committee
• Lisa Hobson-Webb, MD, Neurology APT Committee

All faculty and trainees are encouraged to attend, as well as division promotion and tenure administrative staff across the department. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be served.

If you have questions or need additional information, please email Daniella Zipkin.

 

DOM Research Retreat for Fellows & Early Career Faculty

The annual Department of Medicine (DOM) Research Retreat for Fellows and Early Career Faculty will occur on Wednesday, November 1, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the J.B. Duke Hotel, Banquet Hall.

This event is targeted towards research-oriented fellows and early career faculty.

Attendees will:

• Learn about DOM research resources, including grant submission support with DOMRA and clinical research support with DOM CRU.
• Hear from diverse research faculty, who will share their experiences developing a research focus, finding mentors, and successfully navigating a K grant submission.
• Network with other researchers, including fellows, faculty, and leaders across DOM.
• Connect with colleagues while enjoying dinner.

The retreat is an excellent opportunity for you to connect, learn more about our strategic research plan and how to thrive as a member of the DOM research community.

For questions regarding the research retreat, contact Saini Pillai, MBA. (Registration deadline has passed, but there may still be room).

 

Open Enrollment 2024 Closes Friday

Open enrollment is underway through 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 27. The annual enrollment period for medical, dental, vision, and reimbursement accounts is the time to review and make benefit selections to ensure you have the coverage you want that is appropriate for you.

Participation in the Health Care and/or Dependent Care Reimbursement accounts does not auto-renew. You must enroll each year to participate. Your current selections for 2023 will, however, continue into 2024 unless you make changes to your coverage.

There are two ways to make changes for 2024:

• Log on to the Duke@Work self-service website, go to the MyInfo page and click on the “Open Enrollment” link under My Benefits heading
• Call a representative at 919-684-5600, Option 1

After submitting your enrollment selections, be sure to print and review your confirmation statement that will be sent to your Duke email account.

If you need assistance or have questions, contact the Duke Open Enrollment Service Center at 919-684-5600, Option 1. Representatives are available weekdays from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. from Oct. 16 – Oct. 27 and from 10 a.m.– 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21.

 

Flu Vaccinations!

Duke Health requires all employees to be vaccinated by 10 a.m. on Nov. 7 – coming up quickly. If you need a medical/religious exemption, the application deadline is Tuesday.

Duke offers free flu vaccinations in a variety of convenient locations. Don’t forget to fill out the screening survey within 48 hours of going to get the vaccine at Duke. It’s required.

A list of locations, dates, and times for flu vaccination and a link to the required screening survey can be found on Duke’s Fight the Flu website. And, if you have any questions about the flu vaccine you can email either StopTheFlu@duke.edu or EOHWflu@dm.duke.edu.

Don’t forget — masking is highly recommended when providing clinical care. Some units now require masking due to COVID outbreaks — including all Heart Center inpatient and procedural units. Please pay attention to signage on our units and elsewhere within the hospital.

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• Tomorrow is the start of National Respiratory Care Week (Oct.23-29). Thank an RT! #RCWeek23
• October is Medical Ultrasound Awareness Month as well as National Pharmacists Month.
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.

  

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Oct. 24: Rapid Sequence or Simultaneous Initiation of GDMT for HFrEF:  Optimizing Therapy with a Need for Speed with Stephen Greene. 5 p.m. DN 2002 or via Zoom.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Oct. 25: DHP Case Presentation with Husam Salah. In-person only. Noon, DMP 2W96.

Oct. 27: Grief Debrief with Tony Galanos. In-person only. Noon, DMP 2W96.

 

Save the Date: 2023 Barbara Hertzberg Women’s Health Lectureship

Nov. 16: Coronary Artery Disease in Women: Where are we in 2023? with Leslee J. Shaw, Ph.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. 7:30 a.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom. This is a Radiology Grand Rounds event.

 

Call for Applications: 2024 Leadership Programs

The Office for Faculty announced this week the call for applications for their 2024 Leadership Programs, including ADVANCE-UP, ALICE, DCLP, and LEADER. Click here to learn more. Applications are due Nov. 3.

 

DIHI Innovation RFA 2024

The Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI) has announced its next annual Request for Application (RFA) for selecting and implementing innovative solutions in our clinical enterprise. The proposals should address actual and important problems encountered by care providers, patients, and their loved ones, and represent urgent health challenges nationally.

For the 2024 funding cycle, they are specifically interested in the following topics: 

Generative AI & Large Language Models: AI solutions to improve staff and clinician efficiency, patient journey, and outcomes

Please visit the Innovation RFA web page for additional information, to download an info packet, and to see the timeline for 2024 projects. The deadline for submitting applications is November 3, 2023.

All proposals are required to have a DUHS operational lead as a co-sponsor to be accepted for review.

If the DIHI team can be of any assistance to you in the formulation of ideas or connections, please contact Suresh Balu. The DIHI team looks forward to your innovative solutions!

 

Coming Up: 15^th Annual Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium

The 15^th annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium will be held on Friday, November 17^th at the Durham Convention Center. Faculty directors will be H. James Ford, MD, director of the PH program at UNC, and Terry Fortin, MD, co-director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at Duke. Registration is now open: https://duke.is/9/7rs5. Please join us!

 

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart Services, at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, on Wednesdays, will be considered for weekend inclusion.

 

Duke Heart in the News:

October 13 — Robert Mentz

Medscape

Trials Say Start Sacubitril-Valsartan in Hospital in HF With ‘Below Normal’ LVEF

https://duke.is/p/y8u7

October 13 — Tom Povsic

CGT Live

Thomas Povsic, MD, PhD, on Ongoing Research With XC001 Angina Gene Therapy

https://duke.is/4/u5bw

October 16 — William Kraus

WorldHealth.net

How Biology Influences Fitness: Personalized Exercise

https://duke.is/6/a3qa

October 17 — Wuwei Feng

DAIC.com

Learning More About How Cancer Affects Stroke Risk

https://duke.is/p/x5mq

October 18 — Duke University Hospital

Becker’s Hospital Review

The top heart center in every state

https://duke.is/w/638n

Highlights of the week:

HFSA 2023 Highlights

The heart failure community gathered in Cleveland, OH last weekend for the HFSA Annual Scientific Meeting (Oct. 6-9). The program was action-packed with leading science being presented by Duke fellows, APPs, faculty, and many more. A special shout-out to Mike Felker who is now President-Elect leading up to next year’s meeting in Atlanta!

Notable highlights from Duke presenters:

• Work by Karen Flores, Han Kim, and Ravi Karra, et al on CMR in genetic cardiomyopathies was presented by all-star med student Kyla Brezitski.

  

• Joey Harrington presented a rapid-fire LBCT update on troponin changes in PARAGLIDE.
• Marat Fudim and Rob Mentz had LBCT presentations on REBALANCE-HF and PARAGLIDE+PIONEER, respectively.
• Senthil Selvaraj presented in a spotlight session on targeted metabolic profiling with Dapa in HFpEF (with Svati Shah as senior author) – this session also highlighted work by Joey and Marat.
• Johana Fajardo served as an advisory committee member and moderator for a high-yield session on cardiac amyloidosis.
• Steve “GDMT” Greene led a number of sessions on optimal medical therapy in HF, including talks on SGLT2i and how to take Theory into Practice.
• Stephanie Barnes moderated a session on engaging CV team members in clinical trials and quality initiatives and spoke during a session on managing congestion in HF.
• Mike Felker presented endpoint considerations during a special FDA session on subgroups in HF clinical trials.
• Jason Katz opened a fantastic shock management session with a talk on how to identify and risk stratify patients with cardiogenic shock. He also competed in the CPET challenge fundraiser – and ranked in the top 3!!
• Adam DeVore helped close out the meeting with an exceptional talk on the practical adaptation of GDMT in patients at high risk for adverse events.

Duke team members were also prominently positioned during various plenary sessions, Journal of Cardiac Failure activities, and speed mentoring.

 

 

 

 

 

Another highlight was a Heart Failure Collaboratory gathering to recognize Distinguished Leadership Award recipient Chris O’Connor, which celebrates a leader in education and mentorship within the field of heart failure.  Chris has been a made seminal contributions to the field of Heart Failure,  mentor to many at Duke, and continues to be a north star for the field of cardiology in our evidence generation and clinical practice.

Perhaps the biggest highlight was coming together, in person, as a Heart Failure community and reconnecting with many of our former Duke faculty and fellows!

 

The 2023 Triangle Heart Walk is a Wrap!

Thank you to everyone who joined us to support the American Heart Association (AHA) 2023 Triangle Heart Walk last weekend. The weather was beautiful – an ideal day for a walk! Nearly 10,000 walkers attended the event, which raised just over $1.8 million. Special thanks to Chris Granger for taking the podium to speak on behalf of Duke Health!

Overall, we had 1,513 walkers representing Duke Health and our teams collectively raised $162,777 for our AHA partners. Shown here are a number of our team members, including Chris Granger, Jill Engel, Sarah Snow, CDU team members Lynda Metcalf, Juliette Eck, Emily Deason, Sarah Hatton, Brenda Sedberry, Ashlee Davis, and Jeff Federspiel from Duke Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

We are proud of you, and all of our Heart Walk teams, for your fundraising efforts this year. Thank you! 

   

 

Celebrating Physician Assistants

Thank you to all of our incredible physician assistants (PA) throughout Duke Heart! Last week was National Physician Assistant Week (October 6-12), which recognizes the PA profession and the many contributions they make to the health of the nation. It’s a time for all of us to recognize the tremendous role they play in healthcare throughout Duke Health.

Did you know there are 168,300 certified PAs in the U.S. caring for more than 9 million patients a week with 514 million annual patient encounters? Or that the PA profession was launched right here at Duke?

As highly skilled team members and healthcare leaders, PAs provide exceptional patient care in virtually all health care specialties and settings. PAs are pivotal in the health care delivery within our service line and across the Duke Health enterprise, serving in critical roles throughout clinical care, medical education, health administration, leadership, and research.

We are deeply grateful for the dedication and contributions our Duke Heart PAs make each and every day.

 

Flu Vaccination Reminder!

Do you know what is better than a gorgeous autumn day in North Carolina? Not being sick with the flu.

Duke Health requires all employees to be vaccinated by 10 a.m. on Nov. 7 – just a few weeks away. If you need a medical/religious exemption, the application deadline for that is Oct. 24.

Duke offers free flu vaccinations in a variety of convenient locations. This week (Oct. 16-19), Duke University is offering a special influenza vaccination clinic for employees in the Moyle Board Room of the Karsh Alumni & Visitors Center – great parking (free for 30 mins!) and easy to find! Hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Don’t forget to fill out the screening survey within 48 hours of going to get the vaccine at Duke. It’s required.            

Duke’s Fight the Flu website has a list of locations, dates, and times for flu vaccination, and a link to the required screening survey. If you have any questions about the flu vaccine you can email either StopTheFlu@duke.edu or EOHWflu@dm.duke.edu.

Don’t forget — masking is highly recommended when providing clinical care. Some units now require masking due to COVID outbreaks — including all Heart Center inpatient and procedural units. Please pay attention to signage on our units and elsewhere within the hospital.

 

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• This week, October 15-22, is Healthcare Quality Week.
• October is Medical Ultrasound Awareness Month as well as National Pharmacists Month.
• Masking is strongly recommended throughout all clinical areas during respiratory virus season, from now through early March.

 

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Oct. 17: Revascularization for Ischemic Cardiomyopathy: Can We Reconcile the Randomized Trials? with Bernard Gersh. 5 p.m. DN 2002 or via Zoom.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Oct. 18:  Topic TBD. In-person only. Noon, DMP 2W96.

Medicine Grand Rounds

Oct. 20: Stepping in 4 Respect: Upstander Training Nationally and at Duke University with John Duronville, Margaret Plews-Ogan, and Gregory Clarke-Townsend. 8 a.m., DN 2002 or via Zoom.

Call for Applications: 2024 Leadership Programs

The Office for Faculty announced this week the call for applications for their 2024 Leadership Programs, including ADVANCE-UP, ALICE, DCLP, and LEADER. Click here to learn more. Applications are due Nov. 3.

 

DIHI Innovation RFA 2024

The Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI) has announced their next annual Request for Application (RFA) for selecting and implementing innovative solutions in our clinical enterprise. The proposals should address actual and important problems encountered by care providers, patients, and their loved ones, and represent urgent health challenges nationally.

For the 2024 funding cycle, they are specifically interested in the following topic: 

Generative AI & Large Language Models: AI solutions to improve staff and clinician efficiency, patient journey, and outcomes

Please visit the Innovation RFA web page for additional information, to download an info packet, and to see the timeline for 2024 projects. The deadline for submitting applications is November 3, 2023.

All proposals are required to have a DUHS operational lead as a co-sponsor to be accepted for review.

If the DIHI team can be of any assistance to you in the formulation of ideas or connections, please contact Suresh Balu. The DIHI team looks forward to your innovative solutions!

 

Register Now: 15^th Annual Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium

The 15^th annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium will be held on Friday, November 17^th at the Durham Convention Center. Faculty directors will be H. James Ford, MD, director of the PH program at UNC, and Terry Fortin, MD, co-director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center at Duke. Registration is now open: https://duke.is/9/7rs5. Please join us!

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our Duke Heart family. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon, on Wednesdays, to be considered for weekend inclusion.

Duke Heart in the News:

October 5 — Stephen Greene

Medscape

The How and Why of Quad Therapy in Reduced-EF Heart Failure

https://duke.is/8/txw2

October 5 — Amanda Craig (Obstetrics & Gynecology)

Medscape

History of Heart Transplant Tied to Worse Pregnancy Outcome

https://duke.is/c/vmfm

October 5 — Stephen Greene

HCP Live

Heart Failure Society of America 2023 Annual Meeting Preview, with Steve Greene, MD

https://duke.is/6/qhsf

October 5 — Amanda Craig

Healio/Cardiology

Complex pregnancies after heart transplant underscore need for patient counseling

https://duke.is/y/64a4

October 6 — David Harpole

OncLive

Dr Harpole on the Design of an Exploratory Analysis of the AEGEAN Trial in NSCLC

https://duke.is/5/hmrb

October 7 — Robert Mentz and Anand Shah (UNC)

HCP Live

Out-of-Pocket Costs Influence GDMT Uptake in Heart Failure, with Anand Shah, MD, MBA

https://duke.is/n/ug53

October 8 — Marat Fudim and Stephen Greene

HCP Live

Don’t Miss a Beat: REBALANCE-HF, with Marat Fudim, MD, MHS

https://duke.is/b/fm7c

October 8 — Marat Fudim

HCP Live

REBALANCE-HF: Greater Splanchnic Nerve Ablation Could Prove Beneficial in HFpEF

https://duke.is/4/yr6n

October 9 — Mohammad Shahzeb Khan

Medpage Today

Heart Failure in Young Adults: Moving in the Wrong Direction

https://duke.is/2/jxtq

(updates an Aug. 9 story)

October 10: Marat Fudim

DAIC

Late-Breaking Data Confirms Safety of Axon Therapies’ Innovative Heart Failure Procedure and Identifies Patients Most Likely to Benefit from SAVM Therapy

https://duke.is/w/2my6

October 10: Monique Starks

Winston-Salem Journal

Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office to test cardiac care drones in a first for the U.S.

https://duke.is/6/tn6e

October 10: Monique Starks

WXII NBC-12, Greensboro

Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office partners with Duke Clinical Research Institute and HOVECON for drone-delivered AED

https://duke.is/p/uh2m

October 11: Stephen Greene

HCP Live

Experts’ Perspectives: Top Story in Heart Failure for 2023

https://duke.is/m/9hxd

October 11: Marat Fudim

Medpage Today

Novel Nerve Ablation Procedure Explored for HFpEF

https://duke.is/c/ngbx

October 11: Robert Lefkowitz

Duke SOM News

Nobel Laureates Highlight Symposium Celebrating Lefkowitz’s 50 Years at Duke

https://duke.is/r/8x7k

October 12: Monique Starks

The Clemmons Courier

First drone-delivered AED program in the country

https://duke.is/8/74uf