Shaping the Future of Cardiology: Key Takeaways From AHA 2024

The American Heart Association’s (AHA) centennial event brought together a plethora of diverse perspectives spanning the field of cardiology, nephrology, radiology, and more. Scientific and educational sessions alike at this year’s meeting underscored the transformative potential of multidisciplinary collaboration, holistic care approaches, and novel innovations to advance the future of cardiovascular health. Speakers discussed with The American Journal of Managed Care^® the value of gathering expertise and facilitating conversations across these different disciplines to bring about new points of view and enhance research efforts and patient care.

A common theme among attendees was the crucial role of forums like AHA to promote collaboration, networking, and the exchange of knowledge between industry leaders, researchers, and clinicians alike. Conferences like AHA create great opportunities to explore novel scientific innovations, including developments in gene therapy, anti-obesity medication, among others, all while presenting these findings in their applied context to demonstrate their impact on patient outcomes.

Speakers emphasized the increasing importance of personalized medicine to account for patients’ unique risk factors and comorbidities, suggesting an end to the “one size fits all” era, and ushering in a new “renaissance” for cardiovascular medicine.

Furthermore, strong partnerships between industry and academia remain vital as clinicians, researchers, and leaders in cardiology continue driving progress in drug development, treatment approaches, diagnostic tools, and more. Overall, speakers expressed great optimism for the future of cardiology and a deep commitment to embracing innovation and interdisciplinary coordination for the betterment of patient care worldwide.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

How do you see the various research presented at AHA impacting your work or patient care?

Maureen Hood, PhD, RN: One of the reasons I like coming to this meeting is it brings together the researchers from all these different disciplines. I mean, cardiology is the big one that stands out because it's American Heart [Association], but there’s also radiology, neurology, nephrology, lifestyle interventions, the basic sciences, epidemiology—trying to figure out what's going on out there.

You get this group together, it's a very diverse group, and everyone's vying for their attention. But at the same time, I think people forget this is where we find the crossover ideas, where you can bring the professionals together. That's one of the areas where I am good at doing research. I have some good ideas, but I'm not an expert in the biomarkers. I'm not an expert in the advanced clinical imaging. So, I find those experts from those different areas.

Most of my research is multidisciplinary, and I think that is the forte of American Heart [Association]. It brings these different disciplines together in the same meeting, talking to one another, and in the planning of our sessions, we're talking to one another to bring in the expertise from the different areas on the topics that are important.

Cathie Biga, MSN, FACC: The house of cardiology is critical, and not only AHA, ACC [American College of Cardiology], [Heart Rhythm Society], [Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions]—all of our societies together. The whole house of cardiology. It's imperative that we're all at that table, because the continuum of cardiovascular care not only has gotten enormously complicated, but the breadth and the depth and the rapidity of the change and the science that continues to astound as you listen to all the late-breaking trials—even here this morning already. That's what we need, and those ongoing, continuous educational opportunities will come together. Boards will never be stagnant. They will always be a dynamic process, and without meetings such as ACC and AHA, that wouldn't be able to happen.

So it's not just the networking and the presentation of the science, but it's really that in depth ability to be able to talk to the principal investigators, to really understand their research and the ins and the outs of it, and then that will then translate into perhaps exam questions or other vehicles that physicians can utilize in order to continue their maintenance of competency and certification.

Khadijah Breathett, MD: This is the centennial year—a wonderful time and place to be for global science to be presented. I think one of the great things about American Heart Association is that it's not just cardiologists. We have physicians from internal medicine to endocrinology to neurology, and the list goes on, and PhD scientists and master’s scientists all thinking about, “How can we improve the health of the heart for individuals in this nation and around the world?”

And the science is not just, like, I'm more of a clinical research and population health research, but there's also basic science and translational research. And so, it's really the whole gamut here, and it's a great opportunity to learn about the late breaking trials, and the things that you may be able to bring back home to your respective hospitals and clinics to improve the care of your patients. So, it's a great time to be here, and a great time for wonderful science.

Masanori Aikawa, MD, PhD: What we have been trying to accomplish at the AHA meeting, and then what we should do more is, integration between clinicians and basic research scientists. You know, there are some sessions that feature both basic research scientists, for example, vascular biologist and cardiologist or cardiovascular surgeon, and to discuss 1 clinical program from different angles. This is extremely important, and then those scientists or clinicians from different disciplines should work together. Sometimes, practically speaking, it's not so easy to do. Everybody's busy, but this is something we really should do.

Another aspect of this is a computational kind of method that has been developing very, very quickly. You know, that supports you. Our systems approach, for example. So therefore, in my group, we have biologists and computational data scientists who are working together in the shared space. This is 1 example of a integrated research approach: clinician and scientist and cardiovascular scientist and data scientist. We should all work together to ask 1 question and then try to resolve 1 problem together—and also academia and industry collaboration is very, very powerful to speed up the process of drug development. For example, diagnostics and the device companies are very, very powerful too. As a community, we really should work together and go kind of beyond the boundaries and practical challenges that we can potentially face.

Milind Desai, MD: I think, we are truly living in the “Renaissance Age” of therapeutic development, especially in cardiology. If you talk about [hypertrophic cardiomyopathy], there's all these new therapies that are being tested. There's gene therapy down the horizon that may change how we look at things. There's a huge field—burgeoning field—of anti-obesity drugs that, whatever patient population they're being tested in, it is hitting a home run.

So, I think the future is tremendously bright in the sense that we are now recognizing that it's not a one size fits all. It's not a one drug fits all. We have to look at the patient as a whole, work on their comorbidities, work on the risk factors, and a lot of things flow in the same direction.