CardioExchange Archive

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending this week’s AHA meeting are blogging together on CardioExchange. The Fellows include Susan Cheng, Madhavi Reddy, John Ryan, and Amit Shah. Check back often to learn about the biggest buzz in Chicago this week — whether it’s a poster, a presentation, or the word in the hallways. You can read the preceding post here.

Chicago may have failed to become host city for the Olympic games, but it is still largely regarded as one of the best conference cities in the U.S. When the cardiology world started to descend upon us on Friday and Saturday, I found myself driving out to O’Hare Airport several times to pick up friends and colleagues. “This is something that you should never offer to do,” one of my colleagues said. “Because there is nothing fun about driving to and from airports.” Although he was probably right, there was something nice about having one-on-one meetings with old friends and getting to talk about career plans and personal lives before going into the sessions with the however many thousands of card-carrying cardiologists in attendance.

AHA can be depressing at times because you arrive pretty upbeat, doing well in your program and having gotten some papers out — and then you see the leadership giving talks and presenting their research, and you feel like a nobody. I was mentioning this to a guy who I did residency with, and he corrected me. He said, “John, when I was a senior in college, I felt that the freshmen owned the campus more than we did, because they had four more years there and were the future of the college. Similarly, we are the college freshmen of AHA.” He was not alone in his thinking, as the Council for Clinical Cardiology sponsored over two hundred fellows to attend the scientific session this year and organized an early career program.

Everyone always mentions that the AHA is a great opportunity to network. That is true to a certain extent, but in the past I have found that a lot of the networking was with one’s peers. However, the session with the mentors that Madhavi talked about was very well organized and gave us all one-on-one time with many leaders in cardiology, including a session where we met in small groups and had lunch with folks such as Drs Elliott Antman, Roberto Bolli, and Clyde Yancy.

Last night, the clinical cardiology council arranged a dinner that again was well organized and more fun than I anticipated. Again there were hundreds of fellows at the dinner, many of whom I had met before either in training in Boston or at prior meetings. The good thing about these meetings is that you can pretend to remember everyone’s name by subtly looking at the oversized name tags hanging around his or her neck (“Great to see you again…Robert”).

At the end of the dinner and the subsequent socializing, I offered, as a representative of the host city, to drive a few colleagues to their hotels. Now, I rarely go to downtown Chicago, and when I am downtown, I use Lake Michigan as my compass (“am I going towards the lake or away from the lake?”; “should I keep the lake on my right or on my left?”). Being downtown at night becomes somewhat more of a challenge because I cannot see the lake. But after a few wrong turns, I successfully dropped off a council chair, two co-fellows and a faculty member from Europe at their hotels. The AHA had successfully brought three generations of cardiologists together into my Toyota Forerunner, and that is the unique and uplifting aspect of this meeting.

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending this week’s AHA meeting are blogging together on CardioExchange. The Fellows include Susan Cheng, Madhavi Reddy, John Ryan, and Amit Shah. Check back often to learn about the biggest buzz in Chicago this week — whether it’s a poster, a presentation, or the word in the hallways. You can read the preceding post here.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to announce a delay in our flight because…for the first time…our plane is overweight, and we need to let people off the plane.”

I could not believe my ears. I was on my way to AHA, quietly sandwiched on the plane between the window and a 300+ pound man who was periodically dozing off onto my shoulder, crashing into me with what felt like 100 pounds of force with each dip into dreamland.

I tried to remain focused on the conference ahead, browsing the itinerary and the myriad of great sessions that all seemed to be taking place at the same time. I began, however, to get restless, as we were waiting over 30 minutes for them to unload the plane. Only in America do we have situations where, even if the plane is not full, it is still overweight! I wondered, would this happen in other countries where obesity is not such an issue? I was face to face with the issue….

It was an uncomfortable moment at the time, but looking back, I found it motivating. Of course, we all tackle obesity in the clinic with patients. Additionally, however, we have the challenge and responsibility to tackle the problem on a broader level through research and advocacy, whether we assess mechanisms of obesity, promote public health initiatives, or do other similar work.

My plane had not even lifted off for Chicago, and I felt as if the didactic experience was already beginning. I was grateful for the conference ahead; only by putting our minds together can we start to understand and address one of the most challenging and weighted issues in America.

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending this week’s AHA meeting are blogging together on CardioExchange. The Fellows include Susan Cheng, Madhavi Reddy, John Ryan, and Amit Shah. Check back often to learn about the biggest buzz in Chicago this week — whether it’s a poster, a presentation, or the word in the hallways. You can read the first post here.

The very first thing I noticed while boarding the massive buses to the AHA this morning was the advertisements by Takeda.  While somewhat intrusive, the ad itself was rather clever. It did not mention a particular drug but just showed the company name alongside a giant aortic arch shaped as an iceberg and the words “Hypertension, a global warning.” The ads were everywhere  — on the side of the bus, on the backs of every seat on the bus, and in the giant arrival hall at McCormick Place.

I was there early to attend the Early Career and Fellows-in-Training Program on Saturday, one day before the main conference. The vast behemoth of a hall was eerily empty. In the exhibits hall, steel boxes were being unloaded in preparation for the main events. After some help from some friendly security staff, I located room N427 for the opening session. One of the first speakers was Bob Bonow from Northwestern who delivered a rather sobering speech on the current state of clinical research in the U.S. He discussed how NIH funding for scientific research was decreasing and ended by saying that “the clinical investigator is an endangered species.” This left me rather reflective for the rest of the morning.

Luckily the afternoon session was more cheerful. There were several simultaneous small groups each on a specific topic, and I chose to attend the session on “Global Cardiovascular Research Training; Opportunities and Experiences.” I have been interested in global cardiovascular research since attending a World Heart Federation Conference on global cardiovascular epidemiology in 2006. I didn’t really know how to incorporate this interest into my clinical training as a cardiology fellow and this was a very practical presentation on exactly how to do so. All of the speakers were either cardiology fellows or recent graduates who had spent a significant portion of fellowship doing research abroad in countries ranging from India to Kenya and South Africa. The speakers talked about the challenges in setting up these projects, including finance and being far from family, but underlined how rewarding it had been. Most useful to me were some of the resources they used to finance their endeavors. Those interested in learning more might want to look at a short article in Circulation written by two of the speakers earlier this year.

In summary, the first day was everything we would expect from a scientific meeting — exciting, thought-provoking, and breathtakingly dull, all at the same time. Just kidding — the meeting is terrific, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to be here.