Heart Valve Summit Video #1: Cardiologists & Surgeons Unite To Advance Valvular Therapy!

As I write this, I am flying home to Los Angeles after attending the 2011 Heart Valve Summit. The meeting was beyond exciting as over 500 cardiologists, surgeons, anesthesiologists, physician assistants and nurses congregated in Chicago to discuss the treatment of heart valve disease -- including heart valve repair and heart valve replacement surgery.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting several educational videos filmed at the Heart Valve Summit. However, I thought you might like to learn more about this special event. That said, I asked Dr. David Adams, the Program Director of the Heart Valve Summit, to describe the significance of this meeting for the patients and the caregivers of our community.

Video available online at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpYZXl84evo

Thanks to Dr. David Adams, cardiac surgeon, the 500+ attendees, the American College of Cardiology and the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons for working together to extend and enhance our lives!

I also want to thank the medical device manufacturers who exhibited at the Heart Valve Summit. It was very neat to see, touch and learn about the technologies provided by Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Cryolife, Sorin, Philips Healthcare, LSI Solutions and Edwards.

Personally, I was fascinated by the new CoreValve device, which is designed to replace the aortic valve without an incision to the patient's sternum or ribs. To learn more about aortic valve replacement surgery, click here.

CoreValve Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (Medtronic)

I was also quite amazed by the Philips 3D Transesophageal Echocardiogram (3D TEE) which enables surgeons and their medical teams to see images of the heart -- including our valves -- in three dimensions, in real-time, during cardiac procedures.

Philips 3D Transesophageal EchoChardiogram

Lastly, I want to extend a HUUUUUUUGE thanks to my sister, Monica, who came to Chicago to help me film the educational videos that you will see posted at this blog in the days ahead.

Monica, My Sister, Filmed The Heart Valve Summit Video Series

Thanks to Monica, we were able to film over 15 videos with leading heart valve specialists including Dr. Gillinov, Dr. Accola, Dr. Martin, Dr. Bolling, Dr. Roberts and many others. If you would like to see these videos, you can subscribe to my blog (it's free) by clicking here. That way, you will know as soon as the new videos are posted at this website.

Keep on tickin!
Adam

P.S. If you are hearing impaired, I have provided a transcript of this video interview with Dr. Adams below:

Adam: Hi everybody, it's Adam, and we are here in Chicago, Illinois for a very special event. I'm thrilled to be with Dr. David Adams who is the chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center and I was hoping Dr. Adams if you can share what this event, the Heart Valve Summit, is all about for the patients and caregivers who are watching us.

Dr. Adams: Adam, it's great to see you again, it's really important to have someone like you here to capture this and send it to patients. Let me tell you what this meeting is all about. It's a meeting that's co-sponsored by the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and the American College of Cardiology. This is the 7^th year we've done this meeting and what we wanted to do is have a meeting where we would bring cardiologists and cardiac surgeons together for a few days and talk about all the issues in heart valve disease. It's a case-based meeting. We all bring patient cases and examples and we go over decision making and talk about techniques and also talk about long term outcomes. And it's a very unique meeting, we have 500 doctors here and we're going to spend 2 days talking about patients and talking about decision making. What makes it unique is that there's a lot of discussion around these cases. I get to go to lots of meetings and I actually get to direct a few meetings from time to time and I will tell you that the reviews from this meetings from participants are always the highest of any meetings that I go to. I think that reflects the interest that all of us have in understanding valvular heard disease and sort of perfecting, or trying to perfect, it's always an impossible task, trying to perfect our decision-making with these patients.

Adam: Thanks so much for what you're doing, for bringing all these folks together, for advancing valvular treatment. It means a lot to our community and your support is always very much appreciated.

David Adams, MD: Thanks very much Adam.