Leading cardiologists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are presenting new basic and clinical research findings at the 57th annual American College of Cardiology (ACC) meeting in Chicago, March 29 to April 1.

Among the presenters, Dr. Antonio M. Gotto, Jr., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and a world-renowned expert in cardiovascular medicine, will take part in two panel discussions. The first session, titled “Conversations With Experts” (Sunday, March 30, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm), will focus on the importance of HDL and triglycerides. The second presentation (Monday, March 31, 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm) will center on aggressively treating LDL. Dr. Gotto is available to comment on these sessions and any other late-breaking news and findings presented at the conference, including the just-announced, official results from the significant ENHANCE trial.

Highlights from the symposium presentations and posters to be made by NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell physician-scientists include the following:

ECLIPSE Trial: Ensure’s Vascular Closure Device Speeds Homeostasis
Late-Breaking Clinical Trails and Abstracts
Press Event: Tuesday, April 1, 7:30 am [18891]
Presentation: Tuesday, April 1, 11:30 am [18892]
Authors: S. Chiu Wong, et al.

Dr. Wong, national principal investigator of the multicenter ECLIPSE trial, will present data showing that the wound closure device ExoSeal is safe and effective for catheterization procedures. Following procedures such as angiograms and angioplasties, a hole is left in the artery. In order to close the artery and prevent bleeding, manual pressure is applied to the area and patients are required to lie, immobilized, for up to six hours, to ensure clotting. But now, new findings show that ExoSeal greatly reduces the time for clotting and shortens the time of patient immobilization. Subjects who received ExoSeal had no bleeding an average of 4.4 minutes following the placement of the device, compared to an average of 20 minutes in the group receiving traditional manual compression. ExoSeal subjects were able to move-around after an average of 2.5 hours post device deployment compared to the manual compression group who ambulated in an average of 6.2 hours. Additional advantages of the new ExoSeal device are its synthetic (non-animal based) composition, which is non-reactive within the body. Other older devices are sometimes animal-based and might be painful when deployed within the body. Dr. Wong is a paid consultant of Cordis Corporation/Johnson & Johnson, which sponsored the research.

Impact of Drug-Eluting Versus Bare-Metal Stents on Long-Term Mortality in Real-World Clinical Practice [2901-10]
Moderated Poster Session I: Saturday, March 29, 1:30 pm - 1:36 pm
Authors: Dmitriy N. Feldman, Christopher L. Gade, Geoffrey Bergman, Nichole Polin, Robert M. Minutello, S. Chiu Wong

Results are to be presented showing that drug-eluting stents are safe and effective compared with bare-metal stents - both used to treat narrowing arteries due to heart disease. Recent reports based on meta-analysis studies have raised concerns over the use of drug-eluting stents, but this new research of a real-world patient pool of 2,365 subjects shows that drug-coated stents are safe and more effective at lowering the rate of mortality compared with the bare-metal variety. After one year, subjects with drug-eluting stents had a 2.5 percent mortality rate compared with 6.9 percent with bare-metal. After 24.8 months, the figures were 4 percent and 13.8 percent, respectively.

Diagnostic Accuracy of Noninvasive Coronary Angiography With 64-Row Multidetector Computed Tomography: A Prospective Multicenter Trial [1038-308] - ACC Poster Award Winner
Poster Contributions: Tuesday, April 1, 9 am - 12:30 pm
Authors: James K. Min, et al.

Cost-Effectiveness of Coronary Computed Tomographic Angiography Using Medicare Category III Transaction Codes: A Matched Comparison to Myocardial Perfusion SPECT [812-4]
Oral Contributions 812: Tuesday, April 1, 8:15 am
Authors: James K. Min, et al.

According to Dr. Min and his team, using computed tomography (CT) is both highly accurate (April 1; 9:00 am - 12:30 pm) and cost-effective (April 1; 8:15 am) for the diagnosis of obstructive coronary disease. In a multicenter trial examining the diagnostic performance of CT scans, the researchers found 95 percent sensitivity for the diagnosis of obstructive coronary artery disease and 99 percent accuracy for determining the absence of disease. In another finding, the team shows that, when compared with standard-of-care nuclear stress tests, CT scans are equally effective but save approximately $500 in healthcare costs in a nine-month follow-up period.

Preoperative Wall-Stress-Adjusted Ejection Fraction Change With Exercise Best Predicts Survival After Aortic Valve Replacement for Chronic Severe Aortic Regurgitation [1006-96]
Poster Contributions: Sunday, March 30, 9 am - 10 am
Authors: Jeffrey S. Borer, Phyllis G. Supino, Edmund M. Herrold, Clare Hochreiter, Frans V. Beltran, Paul D. Kligfield, Mary J. Roman, Karl H. Krieger, Leonard N. Girardi, O. W. Isom

Dr. Borer and his team will present findings showing that mortality after valve surgery for aortic regurgitation - a leaking aortic valve in the heart - might be best predicted by a test for contractility, or the ability for cardiac muscle to contract. The team’s findings show that this value might be the best predictor of outcome, even in patients who do not present any symptoms of the disease. These findings, coupled with an earlier report in un-operated patients using the same contractility measure, suggest that surgical intervention should be considered sooner, based on underlying poor contractility, rather than deciding to operate based upon symptoms or less predictive conventional measures of heart performance in this patient group.

All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality in Relation to Changing Heart Rate During Treatment of Hypertension: The LIFE Study [1028-193]
Poster Contributions: Monday, March 31, 2 pm - 3 pm
Authors: Peter M. Okin, Sverre E. Kjeldsen, Stevo Julius, Darcy A. Hille, Jonathan M. Edelman, Bjorn Dahlof, Richard B. Devereux

Simple measures of heart rate and pulse are reliable at determining risk for future cardiovascular disease. Dr. Okin and his colleagues found that a normal-high resting heart rate of 84 beats per minute might raise the risk of death due to a cardiovascular event by 55 percent and for all-causes of mortality by 79 percent. Additionally, the team found that a 10 beat higher heart rate during follow-up might also impart a 16 percent greater risk of cardiovascular mortality and a 25 percent greater risk for all-causes of mortality.

MRI Findings in Idiopathic Outflow Tract Arrhythmias: A Reappraisal [1015-99]
Poster Contributions: Monday, March 21, 10 am - 11 am
Authors: Steven M. Markowitz, Jonathan W. Weinsaft, Kenneth M. Stein, Sei Iwai, Bindi K. Shah, Bruce B. Lerman

Idiopathic ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a type of irregular arrhythmia - a disturbance in the heart rhythm–that has long puzzled cardiologists. VT is an abnormal rhythm that occurs in the lower chambers of the heart, and most forms of this arrhythmia occur in patients with structural heart disease. Idiopathic VT is a variant that occurs in patients without any known heart disease. However, several reports over the past 15 years have shown that patients with this condition actually have subtle abnormalities in their hearts that can be identified by MRI. A team of cardiologists from NY-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell re-examined this issue with MRI scans utilizing the latest technology. They show that most patients with this condition have healthy, normal hearts. They conclude that the rhythm abnormalities in this condition are caused by abnormalities of the electrical properties of the heart muscle itself, and are not commonly a result of heart disease or a known anatomical defect.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, located in New York City, is one of the leading academic medical centers in the world, comprising the teaching hospital NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medical College, the medical school of Cornell University. NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell provides state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine, and is committed to excellence in patient care, education, research and community service. Weill Cornell physician-scientists have been responsible for many medical advances - from the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer to the synthesis of penicillin, the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S., the first clinical trial for gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, the first indication of bone marrow’s critical role in tumor growth, and, most recently, the world’s first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally-conscious brain-injured patient. NewYork-Presbyterian, which is ranked sixth on the U.S.News & World Report list of top hospitals, also comprises NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/The Allen Pavilion. Weill Cornell Medical College is the first U.S. medical college to offer a medical degree oversees and maintains a strong global presence in Austria, Brazil, Haiti, Tanzania, Turkey and Qatar.

Source: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medical College