Scholarly Paper Judged Best by Top Cardiovascular Journal

The paper, “Denervated Myocardium is Preferentially Associated With Sudden Cardiac Arrest in Ischemic Cardiomyopathy: A Pilot Competing Risks Analysis of Cause-Specific Mortality,” has earned the Best Paper Award for 2017 from the editors of Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.

“The editors identified this article as an outstanding contribution that provides unique supporting data validating the potential of a targeted PET imaging agent of neuronal function for identifying patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy at risk for sudden cardiac death,” said Marcelo F. Di Carli, MD, editor of the journal, in a letter to Fallavollita informing him of the award.

“We believe this observation has excellent potential for guiding management and selection of patients that may benefit most from implantable cardioverter defibrillator therapy.”

The award was highlighted in the journal’s February 2018 issue. It was originally published in the August 2017 issue.

“We have been named one of the best of the year before but never had the top paper,” says Fallavollita, lead author. “This is really quite an honor.”

“The Journal is very competitive; only about 10 percent of manuscripts are published. Just to be recognized as one of the best papers is an honor,” says John M. Canty Jr., MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Albert and Elizabeth Rekate Professor of Medicine.

Canty, who is chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, is a co-author and lead investigator on the study.

Fallavollita and Canty are involved in extensive research that involves sudden cardiac arrest and the use of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs).

Their PAREPET (Prediction of ARrhythmic Events With Positron Emission Tomography) clinical trial — on which the paper is based — enrolled 204 subjects with ischemic cardiomyopathy eligible for primary prevention ICDs.

“It ended up being the largest PET study ever done on sudden cardiac arrest,” Fallavollita says.

They are currently co-investigators on a follow-up trial through a five-year, $3.7 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute titled “Prediction of ARrhythmic Events With Positron Emission Tomography — II (PAREPET II)” that began this spring.

Sunil Baldwa, MBBS, clinical assistant professor of medicine, is another Jacobs School co-author on the paper.

Other co-authors are:

• Randolph L. Carter, PhD, professor emeritus of biostatistics in UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions
• Jonathan D. Dare, research scientist at Independent Health