April 19th, 2012
A Fellow at ISHLT: First-Day Impressions
Kathryn Jesseca Lindley, MD
I’ve arrived in beautiful Prague, Czech Republic, for the annual meeting of the International Society for Heart & Lung Transplantation. It’s been a fantastic adventure thus far. The city is amazing, and there’s been an exciting variety of presentations and posters at the meeting.
ISHLT is unique in many ways. It’s much smaller, more “intimate” than AHA or ACC, and this has been kind of neat. The meeting also brings together a real potpourri of cardiologists, surgeons, and pulmonologists who all have such insight and unique perspectives on the many clinical issues we all face in this patient population.
The focus on the global burden of end-stage heart and lung diseases is particularly interesting to me. How differently international communities have dealt with the issues of organizing organ allocation and training physicians to care for these patients across political borders. I have heard much discussion of the ways in which politics play into the advancement and/or stagnation of transplant medicine. This includes the need to overcome the effects of years of oppressive government rule in the Eastern Bloc countries and the education of the American public on today’s common scientific issues.
I’m looking forward to another exciting day of both scientific and personal meetings with some of the great minds at work on the challenges in advanced heart failure management around the world!
NEJM Journal Watch — Recent Cardiology Articles- Persistent Symptoms After Valve Replacement for Severe Aortic Stenosis
- Is Diltiazem Safe in Patients with AF Taking Apixaban or Rivaroxaban?
- Does Lowering High Childhood Lipid Levels Prevent Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Adulthood?
- Self-Expanding Supraannular Valve vs. Balloon-Expandable Valve in TAVR for Small Aortic Annulus
- A New TAVR Prosthesis for Aortic Regurgitation Shows Promise