-  MAY 2015  -

Institute Launches 6th Annual Medical Mission to Honduras at The GW/Textile Museum

 

The GW Heart & Vascular Institute hosted an afternoon of exploring art and culture at the newly opened George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum on Sunday, May 3, 2015, to launch our 6th Annual Medical Mission to Honduras. Drs. Cynthia Tracy and Richard Katz presented the five-year history of the cardiac mission. Starting in 2010, Dr. Tracy and colleagues have traveled every summer to Centro Medico Comayagua Colonial Hospital in Comayagua, Honduras. During the two-week mission, the GW team evaluates heart failure and arrhythmia patients, implanting free pacemakers and defibrillators in at-risk patients. Since 2010, Dr. Tracy has acquired more than $2,500,000 in donated heart devices. In addition, her team evaluated more than 500 heart patients and implanted 165 pacemakers and defibrillators. The GW Heart & Vascular Institute has also funded two Honduran physicians to come to Washington, DC for training to establish a pacemaker follow-up clinic in Honduras. Dr. Tracy is scheduled to return to Honduras in September for the sixth mission. To support the Honduras Medical Mission, please visit: http://gwheartandvascular.org/donate.

 

The Textile Museum's inaugural exhibition, Unraveling Identity: Our Textiles, Our Stories features nearly 100 spectacular artworks that span 2,000 years and five continents.  Museum staff provided guests with an overview of the collections with a focus on the textiles from Latin America.

 

GW Cardiology Alumni Celebrate Inaugural P. Jacob Varghese Visiting Professor with Dr. Robert Bonow

  

Graduates of the GW Cardiology Fellowship program joined current cardiology faculty and fellows for the inaugural P. Jacob Varghese Visiting Professor at the Cosmos Club on Wednesday, May 20, 2015. The alumni reception and lecture was hosted by the GW Cardiology Alumni Committee: Drs. Narian Rajan, Hamid Taheri, and Reza Sanai. 

 

Robert O. Bonow, MD, MS, presented "Evidence-based management of mitral regurgitation," during the alumni dinner. Dr. Bonow is Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Innovation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Bonow is past-President of the American Heart Association and chair of the ACC/AHA Guidelines for Management of Patients with Valvular Heart Disease. He has authored or co-authored more than 460 papers and 100 book chapters. He serves on the editorial boards of ten medical journals, and is one of the four principal editors of Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine.     


Interventional Cardiologists Present Research at SCAI Annual Meeting

  

Ramesh Mazhari, MD, Director of GW Interventional Cardiology, presented her research, "Avoiding the Low Road: Cath Access Site and Acute Kidney Injury," at the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) 2015 Scientific Sessions May 6-9, 2015, in San Diego. Dr. Mazhari is an expert on radial artery heart catheterization, which uses the artery in the wrist, rather than traditional approach through the groin, to take pictures of the heart. In addition to lower risk of bleeding and need for blood transfusion, Dr. Mazhari documented a lower incidence of heart catheterization related kidney damage when using the radial artery approach. GW interventional cardiologists perform 96 percent of cardiac catheterizations radially.


Dr. Mercader Presents at the 2015 Heart Rhythm Society Annual Meeting

  

Marco Mercader, MD, presented his latest research, "Selective Cardiac Neurostimulation for Rate Control of Post-Operative Atrial Arrhythmias," at the Heart Rhythm Society's 36th Annual Scientific Sessions May 13-16, 2015, in Boston. After open heart surgery, patients commonly develop abnormal rapid heart rhythms. Dr. Mercader and colleagues have invented a new catheter technique to stimulate the AV nodal Fat Pad, a critical site on the back of the heart which quickly normalizes the heart rate. Dr. Mercader hopes to test his catheter system in patients recovering from open heart surgery in the near future. 


Dr. Reiner Is Special Lecturer on Innovations in Cardiology at Rockefeller University

 

Jonathan Reiner, MD, was visiting lecturer at the Rockefeller University in New York City on May 6, 2015. He presented an overview of "Innovations in Cardiology" based on his book, Heart, written with former Vice President Cheney, and led a post-lecture roundtable discussion with the Rockefeller University clinical scholars.