May 10th, 2013

Blogging from HRS 2013: Excitement at the Convention Center and Outside

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in Denver this week are blogging for CardioExchange. The Fellows include Luis Garcia, Sandeep Goyal, and Amit Mehrotra. You can view the initial post here.

Greetings from the Mile High City, where the HRS meeting is in full force. Denver is an exciting place to host this prominent meeting. The convention center is ideally located in lower downtown (fondly called LODO). With a variety of cool restaurants and bars in walking distance, Denver has enough to keep one busy when not learning EP. The opening highlight was President Clinton’s plenary address, which was well received. All the pioneers in cardiac electrophysiology are here in Denver. I had the pleasure of listening to Drs. Zipes and Josephson talk about their personal journey in field of EP and what motivated them to work so hard.

Riata lead failure was a major highlight of last year’s meeting and has a formidable presence in this year’s meeting. I started off the morning attending the debate about routine extraction of Riata leads with externalized conductors. Let’s just say emotions ran high on both sides. The late-breaking session was notable for the BRUISE CONTROL study showing low pocket hematoma rate with uninterrupted Coumadin use.

I wandered over to the exhibit hall and was astonished by amount of new technology that’s on display. Innovative projects like leadless pacemakers, fluoroless guidance in EP lab and the ever-shrinking size of pacemaker and ICD generators certainly make me excited about the future of EP.

Now, I am off to an off-campus seminar regarding strategies to reduce CIED infections.

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