Home » Uncategorized » Duke Heart Pulse — July 20, 2025

Duke Heart Pulse — July 20, 2025

By Tracey Koepke in Uncategorized on July 20, 2025

Chief’s message: Updates for the week:

We are happy to report that Tracey Koepke is back and doing well. She is helping again with the Pulse and we have some more stories of Amazing team work to save lives in our clinics, new research on pediatric heart transplants from Joe Turek and team, international work by Gerald Bloomfield and team, and the many day to day excellence in research, clinical care and teaching from our fellows, faculty, and staff. Stay out of the heat.

Highlights of the week:

Quick Thinking & CPR Saves Patient

On Tuesday, one of our Duke electrophysiology patients experienced a VT arrest just outside the front door of the Arrington clinic. The patient had just seen Anna Turner, NP and was leaving clinic to go home when they went into polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and arrested.

Marquis Holland, one of our new security officers who had only been on the job for three weeks, along with colleague Christopher Dees, promptly attended to the patient and delivered immediate and high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Holland resuscitated the patient, who was then transported to the hospital.

This patient is alive today because of Marquis, Christopher, and their inspiring actions. We are so grateful for their quick thinking and life-saving actions. The Duke University Police Department is planning to honor them for their heroism.

Marquis is shown here with Anna Turner.

Way to go, Marquis, Christopher, and team!

Selvaraj Named Faculty Lead for CRU HF Cluster

Senthil Selvaraj, MD, assistant professor of medicine in cardiology specializing in advanced heart failure, and a faculty member in both the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute and the Duke Clinical & Translational Science Institute’s Center for Precision Health, has been named the faculty lead for the Duke Heart Clinical Research Unit’s Heart Failure Cluster.

Selvaraj leads several translational studies in cardiometabolism in HF using mechanistic randomized trials. He has significant experience in successful recruitment strategies and study execution in site-based research. This experience will continue to foster the ongoing success of the HF cluster.

Please join us in congratulating Senthil on his new role.

New Technique Could Increase Infant Heart Transplant by 20%

Duke Health has pioneered a world’s-first technique that could expand by up to 20% the donor pool for pediatric heart transplants in the U.S. — offering new hope to families on the waitlist.

The New England Journal of Medicine published the case study on Wednesday, July 16. It details a groundbreaking approach to overcome barriers to heart donation after circulatory death (DCD) in infants.

“This innovation was born out of necessity,” said Joseph Turek, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Duke Health. “We were determined to find a way to help the smallest and sickest children who previously had no access to DCD heart donation.”

DCD is a technique which allows for heart donation to take place after a circulatory death, rather than brain death (once the standard in donation), as long as the functionality of the heart can be assessed on a perfusion device. DCD has previously been used in adult and adolescent transplants, but existing perfusion devices are too large to fit infant hearts.

A technique called normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) could reanimate the heart inside of the body, but it carries logistical and ethical barriers – leading many centers to avoid using it. The lack of NRP uptake causes viable pediatric donor hearts to go unused.

To overcome this, the Duke team developed a novel technique that temporarily reanimates the donor heart outside of the body, on a surgical table using a heart-lung machine (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO) – allowing surgeons to assess the organ’s viability before transplant. The approach avoids the barriers associated with NRP and could become a new standard of care.

Duke scientists are calling the new technique on-table heart reanimation. The first-of-its-kind case saved the life of a then 3-month-old patient, who received the procedure earlier this year.

Every year in the U.S. about 700 children are added to the waitlist for a pediatric heart transplant, and of those about 10-20% die while waiting on the list, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Turek estimates the new on-table heart reanimation technique has the potential to save as many young lives as there are viable pediatric donor hearts currently going unused.

“This is a major step forward in pediatric transplant medicine,” Turek said. “On-table heart reanimation could dramatically expand the availability of precious donations — transforming loss into life with greater stewardship and hope.”

Duke Health has a history of pioneering research in DCD hearts transplants, performing the nation’s first DCD heart transplant in an adult in 2019 and the first in an adolescent in 2021.

Turek has also led several pioneering pediatric heart transplant techniques, including the partial heart transplant, the living mitral valve replacement, and the thymus-heart co-transplantation for tolerance.

In addition to Turek, other authors include John A. Kucera and Douglas M. Overbey.

Redefining Cardiac Care in Underserved Communities Across the Globe

Gerald Bloomfield, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine in cardiology at Duke, is a leader in cardiovascular global health research dedicated to combatting heart disease in under-served areas of the United States and in low to middle-income countries.

“My early ideas of medicine were about having a skill and knowledge that I could use to help other people. Medicine isn’t the only way to do that, but it was the way that resonated with me as a kid,” Dr. Bloomfield said.

Dr. Bloomfield is the associate director for research at the Duke Global Health Research Institute where he leads research and funding initiatives. It’s where he combines his passions for cardiology and global health research.

“I’ve known since I was in grade school that I wanted to be a doctor,” he said. But it was his grandmother, a nurse, who inspired him to pursue medicine. His parents gave him a view that put the world at center stage.

“My parents immigrated to the US from Jamaica, and I always had the perspective that the issues that we’re dealing with today aren’t only happening where we live, they’re happening all over the globe,” he added. “Having seen medical care delivered in places with less resources than we have in the US, I was interested in doing the same for other areas like that,” he said.

After graduating from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, completing its internal medicine residency, master of public health programs and chief residency, he was admitted to Duke University’s School of Medicine’s cardiovascular fellowship program, and later, Duke’s Global Health Residency-Fellowship Pathway and the Fogarty International Clinical Research Fellowship. As a fellow, he got the opportunity to spend one year treating patients in rural Kenyan clinics.

“Heart disease, historically, in Kenya was always a terminal diagnosis. There was no expert to treat hypertension, a heart attack, or stroke,” Dr. Bloomfield said. “What really stuck with me was the fact that patients did not have a general knowledge around cardiovascular disease. The health literacy around heart disease was almost non-existent.”

To deliver the best care, he gained the trust of the community by actively listening to their concerns and educating them in Swahili about chronic conditions like high blood pressure. “I really wanted to hear what the needs are and then figure out if our team are the right people to address those needs,” said Dr. Bloomfield.

Most traditional cardiac fellowship programs didn’t include the opportunity to gain skills to be used specifically in under-resourced populations but spending a year of his cardiology fellowship learning and practice medicine and research in Kenya, closed the gap in training for Dr. Bloomfield.

Providing Care and Leading Research in Kenya

Afterward, Dr. Bloomfield and his family began spending six months out of each year in Kenya, and the other six months in North Carolina, which was supported by a career development award from Fogarty International Center. During that time, he launched a clinical research program to determine the causes of heart failure among East Africans at the Moi University School of Medicine, in Eldoret, Kenya.

From there, he, along with several mentors, established the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Disease Center of Excellence at the University, which led to the development of the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital-Duke Cardiovascular Fellowship Program, and the construction of a cardiac care unit.

He conducted research projects, mentored Kenyan physicians, and trained nurses and sonographers to perform heart procedures, echocardiograms (EGC), and ECG readings. Dr. Bloomfield instituted didactic talks, educational lectures, and served as a cardiac consultant in the hospital.

“When people saw others getting better, they started coming to the hospital on death’s door, and we were treating them and sending them home after they improved,” Bloomfield said.

As demand grew, more senior cardiologists were brought in to care for patients and mentor future clinicians, creating a new opportunity for Dr. Bloomfield. He discovered a passion for mentorship, a role he developed over time, and now leads with a specific approach.

“My overall approach to our training program has always been to listen first. When we’re seeing patients in clinic and hearing their stories, it applies to our research and what the community needs are,” he said.

After handing over the reins to Kenyan leaders, and with Duke doctors visiting intermittently, Dr. Bloomfield now only returns to Kenya two-three times a year to advise on the future growth of cardiac care and research. “The programs there are essentially sustaining themselves, and we get to collaborate on a higher level” he said.

Research in the US

Dr. Bloomfield is now bringing the lessons he’s learned abroad to the U.S. health care system. “Although the language and some details may be different, the issues around delivering high quality care to people who are sick and don’t have access to the resources they need, are very similar in many parts of the world, including in the U.S.,” he said. “Global includes international and domestic. We need global health approaches in the U.S. as well.”

He is currently working with a team of experts to address cardiovascular health in rural areas. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and accounts for every one in four deaths globally. Rural areas experience 60,000 more deaths than urban areas yearly due to limited access to health care providers and resources. Most rural hospitals don’t have specialists or the cardiac imaging machines required to detect, diagnose, and manage cardiovascular disease.

To combat this, Dr. Bloomfield is co-leading the Echocardiography Core Lab on the mobile examination unit for the Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal (RURAL) Study. It’s an ongoing population-based cohort study that helps physicians identify risk factors for heart and lung diseases in rural counties in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi that have higher cardiovascular disease death rates than the rest of the country.

“We are bringing early diagnosis to individuals,” he said. The mobile examination units are outfitted with a lab, private exam rooms, and cardiovascular assessment and imaging tools. “We’re seeing community volunteers and assessing their heart health. Then we’re following them over time to figure out how we can prevent heart disease or treat it better in the future,” he added.

Dr. Bloomfield ensures the echocardiograms are performed correctly and then the scans are sent to Duke for analysis. Unlike similar studies, the results are returned to participants and shared with their doctors if abnormalities, like signs of heart failure, are found.

More than 3,000 participants have been enrolled in the study. The team engages with community leaders first and then hosts a free day for residents to tour the truck and get familiarized with the study. Researchers are comparing the data they gathered and comparing it to four counties that have lower cardiovascular disease rates.

*This piece was authored by Synclaire Cruel for Duke’s Dept. of Medicine, July 11, 2025.

Kudos to Kim

We received a wonderful kudos for Yoo Jin Kim, first year cardiology fellow, from Bharathi Upadhya, MD this week and wanted to share it here with our readers.

“Anna Lisa, I cannot believe this week marks Yoo Jin’s first week at Duke. She performed like a seasoned fellow. On the very first day, she knew all the patients. We had a jam-packed DHP service this week. She is very efficient. The service had 18 to 19 patients, and interns can only take 8. Interns are also new, and one was very stressed. She pre-rounded and primarily worked like an intern for a few patients. She did not complain and was happy to do that. She has the leadership quality. Her clinical skills are excellent. She is energetic.” — Regards, Bharathi

“Yoo Jin – great job on a new and busy service in a new hospital with new interns!” — Anna Lisa Chamis, MD

Excellent work, Yoo Jin!

Summer Fun Shout-out!

A shout-out on behalf of Carolyn Lekavich to Kara Lawson, head coach of the Duke women’s basketball team and to her players! Lekavich shared a happy parent moment with us this week. Her daughter, Venia, participated in Coach Lawson’s camp — a new program offering this year — and this week Venia was awarded Defensive Player MVP.

Venia is shown here alongside Duke women’s basketball team members.

Way to go, Venia and go DUKE!

Duke Heart Gains New Family Member

We are pleased to share that Duke Heart has gained a new family member — Niko Massengale, the son of Ashley and Johnny Massengale, was born on July 7. Diane Sauro received a message of gratitude from Ashley this week and asked us to share it here.

“First, I wanted to say how thankful I am to be part of such a kind team. Each text, visit, meal/Door Dash, and care package has been so thoughtful and sweet. I’ve been amazed by the outpouring of support. It’s made a tough time more manageable and means a lot to me and Johnny.

Our son, Niko Patrick Massengale, was born on 7/7. [Due to his early arrival] he will remain admitted until closer to his due date. He’s doing great and transitioned to room air yesterday! We are so relieved that he has done okay and hopeful that he continues to do well. I’m doing just fine. We’re at the hospital daily so I’m sure I’ll see y’all soon. Thank you again for all the love, Ashley, Johnny, Maya, and Niko.”

CME Programming Updates

The Duke Cardiac Imaging Symposium is scheduled for Saturday, October 4, 2025. It will be held in the Trent Semans Center.

Echocardiography remains a critical component in the diagnosis, management, and surveillance of cardiovascular disease. As cardiovascular care continues to evolve, so too must the knowledge and skills of clinicians utilizing imaging in practice. This year’s symposium is designed to address emerging clinical questions, updated guideline recommendations, and new imaging modalities through case-based learning and practical applications. The 2025 agenda features expert-led sessions on updated ASE guidelines, coronary artery disease evaluation, strain imaging in cardiomyopathies, tricuspid valve disease, cardiac POCUS, and technical skills development through hands-on breakout sessions.

To register, please visit https://events.duke.edu/DukeCIS2025.

The 17th Annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium will take place on Friday, October 31, 2025, at the Durham Convention Center.

The symposium aims to equip physicians and allied health professionals with current, evidence-based knowledge in the diagnosis and treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH). With a focus on frontline providers, this symposium will explore optimal diagnostic strategies, treatment selection, and timely referrals to specialized PH centers. Clinically challenging presentations, including CTD-PAH, CPPC PH, CTEPH, PH associated with ILD, COPD, portopulmonary hypertension, and PH in end-stage renal disease—will be addressed through interactive lectures and robust case-based discussions. The format encourages dialogue and debate to foster practical insights and collaborative decision-making in complex scenarios.

To register, please visit: https://events.duke.edu/17PH2025.

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart & Vascular 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 team. 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:

June 4 — Bradi Granger and Anna Tharakan (Health Policy summer intern)

American Hospital Association/Advancing Health Podcast

How Duke University Is Fighting Hypertension Through Community Collaboration

June 10 — Brittany Zwischenberger

STS.org/Surgical Hot Topics Podcast

Same Surgeon, Different Light w/ Dr. Brittany Zwischenberger

June 16 — Duke Health (mitral valve transplant)

Becker’s Clinical Leadership

6 1st-of-its-kind procedures performed in 2025

June 17 — Neha Pagidipati

Healio