Dr. Gurusher Panjrath

Served on the conference planning committee. He was abstract captain and reviewer for heart failure papers, co-chair for heart failure sessions, moderator for poster presentations, and chair for the Fellows Heart Failure Career Symposium. He also co-chaired the sessions Readmissions in Heart Failure: Questions Unanswered and Treatment Strategies for End Stage Heart Failure: Medications, Machines and Everything in Between. Dr. Panjrath serves in major roles for the ACC, including Chair- Resource Work Group for Academic Cardiology Council, Chair-Elect- HF/Transplant Section, Chair- Acute Heart Failure Work Group, Chair- Fellow Careers in HF Symposium Work Group, and the 2017 HF Guideline Update Tool Kit Working Group.

Dr. Andrew Choi

• "Bridging the Gap: Multimodality Imaging in a 56-year-old patient with sudden death." The presentation was moderated by Fellow Bianca Ummat. Dr. Choi was the senior author, joined by GW co-authors, fellow Kaitlin Baron and faculty Marco Mercader, Jonathan Reiner, Brian Choi and Robert Zeman. This case presentation highlighted the role of advanced cardiac imaging available at GW that identified scar in a very thick heart muscle with excessive “squeezing” of the heart arteries causing a life threatening heart rhythm.
• "Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in the Evaluation of Fibrofatty Infiltration for Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia/Cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C)" Faculty lead author Andrew Choi; presenting fellow Andrew Bradley in collaboration with the Arai Lab at National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.This study applied a novel technique using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose a life threatening condition called “Right Ventricular Dysplasia."

Dr. Jannet Lewis

• "Effect of Blood Pressure Control on Left Ventricle Strain Using Speckle Tracking Imaging." Presenting fellow Gurpreet Sodhi, Faculty author Jannet Lewis. This project evaluated speckle tracking, a new echocardiographic technique, to determine the impact of treatment of hypertension on heart muscle function.

Dr. Marco Mercader

• "Chagas Heart Disease: A Comparison of Clinical and Intraoperative Pacing Parameters." Medical residents Maziar Rahmani and Ivan Peña, cardiology fellow Bianca Ummat, cardiology intern, Dorys Chavez, faculty author Cynthia Tracy and senior author Marco Mercader detected a new electrocardiographic marker of Chagas disease, a common parasite infection in South and Central America. Chagas can cause severe heart failure and frequently was seen during our annual medical mission to Honduras.

Drs. Cynthia Tracy and William Borden

• "Dr. Tracy Co-Chaired Heart Rhythm Disorders Today and Tomorrow program on How to Redesign a Care Delivery Team in Preparation for MACRA and MIPS."
• "Dr. Borden was a panel discussant: How to Redesign a Care Delivery Team in Preparation for MACRA and MIPS: The perspective of a practicing cardiologist." These panels focused on preparing physicians on how to implement the MIPS (Merit-Based Incentive Payment Systems) pathway under MACRA (Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act) using new daily practice guidelines, which includes components for Quality, Resource Use, Advancing Care Information and Clinical Practice Improvement activities.

GW Cardiology Alumni Reception at the ACC
On Saturday evening, March 18, faculty, trainees, and alumni of the GW Cardiology fellowship program reunited at the City Tap House Penn Quarter on the occasion of the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session in Washington, DC. The reception hosted former fellows, students and faculty from as far back as the late 1970s. Alumni were able to meet old friends and get to know current cardiology faculty, fellows and staff.