Cardiovascular Medicine

Anne B. Curtis, MD, Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair of medicine, was selected as a panelist on the American College of Cardiology Hour With Dr. Valentin Fuster that was released during the 2018 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions. Curtis joined Fuster and three other cardiologists to share their perspectives on the most significant science released during the conference.

Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine, is the subject of a Q&A interview. “I passionately believe we need to come together as a cohesive group. We need to be a strong health care system here in Western New York because we have competition all around us. We have the Cleveland Clinic, Rochester and Pittsburgh. We need to do an excellent job in terms of all the basics of good, quality patient care and be up to whatever the latest treatments are,” she said.

New British research suggests that aspirin dosages to help prevent stroke and heart attack should be determined by a person’s weight and not a one-size-fits-all approach. Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair of medicine said “it makes a lot of intuitive sense that if you have somebody who is much larger that they might need (a higher dosage).”

An article on MedPage Today about women physicians who choose not to practice cardiology because of work-life balance issues and gender discrimination problems in the field includes an invited commentary by Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine. “Having this factor be so important to career decisions today means that one needs to consider these issues in structuring positions in order to attract the best people,” Curtis said.

An article about the rapid revolution of technology-aided care that is available through remote patient monitoring interviews Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair of medicine; Ajay Chaudhuri, MD, clinical director of medicine and director of the endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes fellowship program; and Andrew H. Talal, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition; about the devices that can reduce patients’ trips to the doctor’s office.

An article about questions over whether it was a broken heart that caused the hospitalization of former President George H.W. Bush just a day after the funeral of his wife, Barbara, interviews Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair of medicine. The sudden loss of a spouse, child or parent “releases an outpouring from the sympathetic nervous system, the fight-or-flight response, which is what seems to damage the heart in broken-heart syndrome,” she said. “The heart rate goes up sharply, blood pressure goes up. This is why people can also have a stroke in situations like this.” 

After a record snowstorm dumped a foot or more of snow across Western New York, articles reported tips from John M. Canty, Jr., MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Albert and Elizabeth Rekate Professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, who said that shoveling “is heavy exercise” and warned that shoveling can cause sudden stress on a person’s body, especially because it is performed in the cold. 

News articles report that Cytocybernetics, a UB spinoff co-founded by two Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences faculty, has been awarded $1.5 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which will support hiring and development. The company was founded by Glenna C. Bett, PhD, vice chair for research and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and Randall L. Rasmusson, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics.

Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences faculty members weighed in on how to stay healthy in the new year in an article on resolutions. Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and Chair of Medicine, said: “If you find you have been too sedentary, figure out when you can fit in 10 minutes of walking to start.” Priyanka Patnaik, MD, medical director at UBMD Family Medicine at Conventus and a clinical assistant professor of family medicine, suggested taking an hour a day “to relax and let go of all the stress of work, maybe spend some time meditating or doing yoga.”

An article on Healio reports on a study that found that the risk for heart failure (HF) events did not differ among patients who were treated with aspirin or warfarin, and quotes Susan Graham, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. “Up to 40 percent of Americans take aspirin, and in (patients with HF) this number may even be higher,” she said. “It’s a great relief to learn that aspirin is safe for this population. One challenge in cardiology is that we may need to use many drugs, including two or three blood thinners. We always want to be sure we’re helping patients, not creating problems.”

A new study has found that heart failure patients who took aspirin daily were not at higher risk of being hospitalized for, or dying from, heart failure. Susan Graham, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, who worked on the study, said heart patients — and older adults in general — are often taking many prescription drugs at any given time. “That speaks to the importance of studying potential drug interactions,” she said. “We have to stay on our toes to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.”

Umesh Sharma, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, has received a five-year, $1 million grant to study a protein that, in excessive amounts, during a heart attack promotes the formation of fibrous tissue in the heart.

Umesh Sharma, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, has received a grant of $1 million from the National Institutes of Health to continue work on a study involving heart failure after a heart attack.

Research by Abhishek Sawant, a fellow in the Department of Medicine, has showed the benefits of performing percutaneous coronary intervention to clear blocked blood vessels in the hearts in people age 90 and older. “We did show that patients who had lower risk and underwent this procedure actually did very well,” he said.

A global cardiology conference held in Vancouver featured two doctors from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences: Anne B. Curtis, MD, Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor of medicine, discussed improved care for atrial fibrillation and guidelines involving the condition, and Michael E. Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences and dean of the medical school, chaired a session on cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death, and spoke on new electrocardiographic predictors of sudden cardiac death.