Jan 2, 2018
Dr Carolyn Lam: (Music playing)...Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the Journal and his editors I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Today is one of my favorite podcasts as always because it is the fellows in training podcast.
This is where the center stage and we’re so pleased to have two brilliant fellows with us today. Dr. Tom Ford from University of Glasgow and Dr. Kevin Shah from UCLA and of course joining us today as well is our editor for digital strategies, Dr. Amit Khera. Hi everyone.
Dr Kevin Shah: Hi Carolyn.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Hey Kevin. Since you're there in wonderful bright and sunny California and going to talk about one of my favorite topics HFpEF. Could you please tell yourself and then please tell us also about the paper you chose?
Dr Kevin Shah: I am a third-year general cardiology fellow at UCLA. I have a career interest in advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. I'm going to be doing a one-year fellowship in that next year at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles.
The article that I picked to discuss was the Reduced LAP Heart Failure I Trial and it was specifically testing a novel device in a small cohort of patients to see if the creation of intraatrial septal connection in patients with HFpEF can improve their filling pressures as well as their symptoms with exercise.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Yeah so Kevin what about this paper stood out to you?
Dr Kevin Shah: The two biggest things that were impressive to me and that really stood out were 1) this concept that keeps coming up more frequently in contemporary research, which is the idea of using a sham trial. Specifically, in this study they did perform a one-to-one randomized trial. With one of the arms, if they did not receive the actual device, they underwent a complete sham undertaking including headphones in music and blind folding the patient who were not sure if they received the device or not.
I think it's an important concept because it does speak to the placebo aspect of procedures. It tries to really control for that when a patient doesn't know if they received a novel device, and we can still test them and see how they feel after-the-fact. I think that's an important strategy in modern trials.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Kevin, that is such a good point and really quite novel too. So we've discussed this paper before but not quite the aspect that you point out and I couldn't agree more. The REDUCED LAP follows its pilot study results, which was open label single arm right published in the Lancet. So this is a very reassuring results since knowledge sham controlled.
I suppose the lesson comes from other device trials that were sham controlled and then gave maybe slightly different results), right when we're talking about the renal innervation trials before. But you said that there were two points that stood out to you so what was the second?
Dr Kevin Shah: The other will also be endpoints and what they chose to target. It was a small trial but I think it's important in a disease state such as HFpEF to select specific endpoint that really reflect the physiology and pathophysiology and the authors should be commended. I think for selecting primary and secondary endpoint that will primarily focus on hemodynamics as well as symptomatic relief.
I know that they are working toward their stage 3 trial and I think in the vein selection of these type of endpoint. Probably more so than endpoints such as mortality are going to favor this disease state in terms of trying to carve out some sort of therapy that actually make patients feel better.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Great great points. For me to just knowing that a hemodynamic endpoint makes sense, because if we look at the Champion Trial and look at the HFpEF subgroup of the champion trial it also seems to show that if people just treated patients with HFpEF according to a hemodynamic guide and in the champion trial that was the pulmonary artery pressure reading. That actually appeared to keep patients out of hospital. And I have to agree with you that sometimes we forget that has HFpEF is about pulmonary congestion and that the end of the day it is a hemodynamic disease. It is heart failure in other words.
Kevin one last thing what do you think about using this sort of strategy in HFREF?
Dr Kevin Shah: That's a good question I can't say I know at least this device has been studied in this trial like you mentioned in one prior trial that was not randomized. I'm sure it's been at least investigated. I can't say I've seen any literature on it. I like to think that it would make some sense from a physiological standpoint, but I don't know if anyone is actually gone to the task of seeing how the device performs in HFREF.
Dr Carolyn Lam: As I said I think at the end of the day I think they're all part of the same heart failure family. And left atrial hyper tension is kind of the final common pathway. So I agree with you that maybe it's worth considering in HFREF too, but then on the other hand of course and have friends HFREF you've got all this great medical therapy. Well Kevin I really, really appreciate your selection. May I now switch over to Tom? Tom would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself ,and which paper you chose.
Dr Tom Ford: Sure thing my name is Tom Ford. I'm very interested in interventional cardiology, and my career path has been a bit unusual because I did my basic cardiology training in Sydney. And then from there I got a great opportunity to pursue a research degree, a PhD, which I’m currently halfway through. That's what Prof. Colin Berry and Prof. Keith Oldroyd here in Glasgow and that’s a British Heart Foundation Fellowship so it's a great opportunity. I went out for recent WOSCOPS Trial from posthoc analysis. In this is a really interesting study a lot of the readers and listeners will be familiar with the original publication. It was actually published 22 years ago. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The WOSCOPS was a landmark trial that looked at statins for primary prevention. And this is the present analysis that looked at just over 2500 Mills with LDL-cholesterol above hundred and 190 mg/dL. So for those of you listeners in the UK 4.5 mmol per liter so quite the high LDL. They looked at these gentlemen without pre-existing vascular disease. There's guideline recommendation for this group but not much evidence. And what they showed was over a five-year period of follow-up that there was a reduction in cardiovascular death and all cause mortality with this treatment. That wasn't just for the period of the trial because of the study design we were able to get a legacy effect which was noted over 20 years of follow-up. So in summary a trial will show the benefits of statins and primary prevention mortality benefit for people without very high LDL to start with.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Carolyn awesome Tom. I love that she began saying that your into interventional cardiology but you chose an article about medical therapy and the importance of it, the statins. I fully agree with you. Amit did you have some for Tom?
Dr Amit Khera: Sure. First I want to commend you both I don't think you did this on purpose but Carolyn's heart failure HFpEF expert. I'm sure she loved the other trial and I'm a preventative cardiologists. So we certainly love you choices this week. Tom, thanks for the summary. It's an important article and one that we did highlight on the previous podcasts. You know there's so many things to talk about but certainly remind you that we have great data sets around that can answer unique questions that maybe are unanswerable today and I think this is an example of that.
Can you speak to this ideal of pulling an old 22-year-old child as you mentioned and how that provides insights and kind of as a PhD student ways to think about ways to be creative and research?
Dr Tom Ford: One of the reasons I chose this child because it's close to my heart looking at a population in the west of Scotland. Sadly over here we've got too high prevalence of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. So what this trial speaks to is the benefits of a really carefully planned procedure. I mean these were outstanding researchers that thought ahead of their time, and as a result of their analysis. Over two decades later they are still multiple publications and there's kind of open approach where there's different research groups that have used this data set for number of different outputs.
I think a real outstanding example of what can be done with well-planned study.
Dr Amit Khera: Sounds like were in agreement about how to use a fruitful database and continue to learn from it as time goes on. The thing about this as you pointed out is the LDL above 190 component and what the authors say this is sort of the first clinical trial evidence for treatment. In your view, does this change practices or guidelines? Was this already what we were doing? Does this support what we were already doing, or how does this impact clinical care and guidelines currently?
Dr Tom Ford: I think it's a good point. People will say we were doing this anyways. I think now it's going to be helpful and practical inside the clinic. If you can say to a patient well actually look I know we’re asking you to take this tablet you've not actually had an event but, ultimately we know the natural history of people in your position may well be unfortunately that they’re high-risk, and that there is actually a mortality benefit to be had from these tablets that you don't necessarily want to take but definitely the benefit’s there.
Dr Amit Khera: The neat part as you pointed out also was dual components when they're looking at the on treatments during the trial. We see an improvement in events. What the WOSCOPS investigators have done so creatively over the years is this idea of a legacy affect.
The long-term impact in preventive cardiology – certainly a space for where were going was just looking beyond the short-term. There's obviously problems there too because that was not pre specified people were necessarily on assigned therapies. Tell me when you look at this long-term legacy effect what does that mean to you? How does that add be it the way you counsel patients or how you think about this treatment in patients with high LDL?
Dr Tom Ford: The effect of the statin assumes that all the patients are actually taking the drug. I think there has to be an analysis of these patients in this trial and obviously not everyone was compliant. So I think we can maybe extraopolate that for the that there might be in even bigger effect for those patients that were actually taking the drug. And I think if you were to take it for five year period. Obviously we don't know what happens after that. What we do know is the solid mortality data.
What it speaks to me is that if you take the drug and you are at high risk to begin with then potentially it's plaque stabilization, the pleiotrophic effects of statins that we know are beneficial and the hard endpoints are definitely reduced. That persists over 20 years of follow-up. So I think that’s really a great victory for preventive cardiology as you said.
Dr Amit Khera: That's a great point about biasing towards the know when you have people crossing over and that this may be conservative of what was seeing in the long term. I think that's a really important point. One last question for you. The West of Scotland trial - generations have changed and back then obviously part of it was trial design but LDLs on average were higher. The median or mean in the group was around 192.
If you look when they look above or below that 190. The people below were 178 or so - still pretty high LDL. So it does beg the question you know we have this paradigm of LDL above 190 should be treated regardless. You wonder if that should be 160 or whether the number should be lower. What are your thoughts about that?
Dr Tom Ford: I agree with you. I think it's always a challenge to kinda pass off dichotomous endpoints when you’ve got continuous variable like LDL. It's just a continuum of risk and divided using the figure 190 in the study. In fact the patients with LDL less than 190 they couldn't show statistically significant reductions in all cause mortality. But I think it's again personalization of meds and we may have to discuss the risk with individual patient.
Ultimately we do have to have a firm conclusion. I think in this study the data is quite clear that 190 does seem to be quite robust as the predictor who's gonna get the most benefit.
Dr Amit Khera: Listen I think protection article that you pointed out was close to home and you certainly discuss it very well and provided lots of important insights. And again I think it was an excellent choice and one that was really highlighted in the media as well. I think there was a broad allure to this article. If we make change gears now little bit we've heard about the science part know we want to talk about what it means to be a fellow in training.
I just want to say on behalf Circulation also speak for myself. It's so important for us to involve fellows in training into our activities and you're one of our major targets in terms of impact and goals for the journal. We're so delighted to do this twice a year and were always thinking about other ways we can get FITs involved. I mentioned just a couple of things the American Heart Association has of fellows in training program where people can sign up for free and get online access to the journal.
So I hope all fellows are taking part in that. We're starting a new initiative called FAVES where just like you both submitted articles of interest of the fellows can do the same. On Fridays we’ll post those on social media so these are a few ways that were getting FITS more involved and we really hope to continue that. Let me start by maybe asking Kevin to have a chat with you as much.
Kevin in terms of journals there's some me now we're getting inundated with information. I think that's a good thing. How do you consume the medical literature? There's old print journals; there's the online journal; there's a table of contents your social media tell us a little bit about how you consume the medical literature.
Dr Kevin Shah: I agree. We’re kinda getting to a space where now the amount of information that's coming out is tremendous. I think that finding a strategy to help filter out what appeals to your clinical and research interest is becoming more challenging. For me I'll say print journals are slowly kind of falling off. I don't subscribe to too many of them but they still do come to my doorstep. The main way that I would say I'm getting access to or at least becoming aware of articles that are kinda relevant to where I am in my training and what I'm doing is the social media. Some primarily at least for me is Twitter.
I'll say it's a helpful tool and that I can follow a group of individuals that have a similar professional interest as me and you can almost always rely on the fact that somebody will post an article that becomes relevant to a common interest. So between sharing on social media I think that's the primary way that I'm really catching my eyes to a major journal articles.
Aside from that I still subscribe by email to a couple larger journals and see their weekly or biweekly updates about what's being published. And the last at least in my institution our division chief Dr. Gregg Fonarow; he goes out of his way to send to the fellows and faculty new articles that are kind of pertinent to clinical practice. Which is very helpful for us.
Dr Amit Khera: That's so helpful and you know everyone has their own way of consuming the literature but I certainly appreciate your interest in social media. You know there are some luddites out there that think of it literally as just social and it really has a professional bent to it. Well rapidly you can figure out the most cutting-edge important articles in your field so I certainly appreciate your comments. Tom let me ask you now, at your stage of training. You've had an interesting training path as you said you sort of started as an interventional cardiologist and now you are doing a PhD. There so many different articles in Circulation. We have original research, state-of-the-art reviews. We have these opinion pieces and on my minds and different ones. Tell us a little bit about what articles appeal to you and which other novel formats maybe you'd be interested in seeing.
Dr Tom Ford: I think that the original research articles are great if it's in your chosen field. Obviously this is where we're going to a great deal of detail on specific topics but outside of that I think that the review articles are great form if it's something that’s a common clinical topic to kinda brush up on. Your On My Mind section I think is great because it gives you an opportunity to hear from key opinion leaders in the field. I think it was Morton Kern discussing invasive coronary physiological assessment.
So I think there’s different types of articles that can be quite helpful. To start with the original research ones. I’ll skim through the contents. I'll tend not to read the details if it's not in my chosen field.
Dr Amit Khera: Yeah great point. Obviously they are topical depending on what your main interest area and we always say reading around your field to get a broader perspective in cardiovascular medicine. I think you hit on the point about on my mind ones. We really want people be able to free associate and original article are sometimes more stiff and linear. So we really like those pieces as well. Carolyn we’ll give you second set ask a question or two to for today.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Actually Amit I just wanted to comment. Isn't it so encouraging to hear the variety of approaches and you know Circulation has enough that we’re meeting various different needs. I really wanted to take the opportunity to thank you as editor of digital strategies for just doing so many of these initiatives for Circulation. I think it’s just incredibly important for the Journal to keep up with the times in that sense. Amit, may I be cheeky ask you how do you consume the literature?
Dr Amit Khera: Carefully. You know the neat part in being on the editorial board of Circulation and one of the associate editors we get to see so many amazing papers that come through and I think obviously I get to see, essentially and also my digital strategies role I essentially see every paper that comes through that we end up publishing.
Obviously I get wide exposure to Circulation but obviously beyond that I get all the e-Table of Contents for almost every major cardiovascular Journal. Certainly looking at social media and I tend to find hotspots interventions and other areas and podcasts – let’s not forget podcasts. So there's some great podcasts out there. I know of one.
Dr Carolyn Lam: Oh I love it. All right but just one last question for both Tom and Kevin from me. I honestly would love to know what do you think we could do better or what would you like to see more from Circulation?
Dr Kevin Shah: I guess the question I have for Circulation is there any role or have fellows ever gotten involved in the review process for articles?
Dr Amit Khera: Listen that's really important because you learn a lot from doing that and obviously in institutions similar to ours where if you asked to review a paper you have a fellow contribute. I think you might be asking something sort of more formal and systematic with Circulation. I will say that one of our Circulation journals I believe it's Circ Heart Failure or Quality and Outcomes I'll check. It has a formal program where fellows essentially can be assistant editors if you will.
We have our cardiology fellows here at UT Southwestern involved in that process. And I think part of that process is just an IT issue of how to maintain confidentiality of our papers for our authors but yet still let fellows contribute meaningfully. And also timing because you know papers have cycles where you decide if he should go out for review but it'll come back and you never know when that happens you have to make the next level decision.
Then it goes potentially to a meeting and so being able to make sure that fellows can participate at every level, cause that's where the value comes in. We are certainly interested in learning from what our other Circulation of family journals is doing in that space and definitely an area that we've thought about some fellows contribute but need to do more.
Dr Carolyn Lam: And Tom how about you?
Dr Tom Ford: Just picking up on your point on what the sister journals are doing you know I see the Outcomes Journal is looking at more visual abstracts and video abstracts. You know I think it's really important that we increase the efficiency of learning. What's your take on that?
Dr Carolyn Lam: That is the greatest suggestion. I like first of all your phrase of increasing the efficiency of learning. Amit, I'm going to turf it to you again.
Dr Amit Khera: I'll tell you what's amazing you know when I started this role a bit ago. Both of you are obviously contributing to research and everyone on this call is and I think we forget that in the social media space we don't have a lot of data. Some things sound good or feel good. At Circulation my predecessor Carolyn Fox did a randomized trial called intention to tweet if you haven't read it. And there's a follow-up to that that was published. And essentially by randomizing articles to social media or not there was no increase in the views if you will of the article.
There's always limitations to every study but the point is, as you think about novel offerings, something we struggle or something we’ve seen as an opportunity, what works we tried a few things we tried certain videos and we look at what's the uptake and interestingly some things we thought that would be widely of interest really weren’t. Then other avenues we’ve tried have been.
I love what you said, and as Carolyn also felt, the idea of efficiency of learning. I think we need to do frankly in the social media and journal spaces is to continue not just to innovate but to study and figure out what works and what doesn't to help different learners.
Dr Carolyn Lam: (Music playing)....Thank you very much audience for listening today as well. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Don't forget to tune in again next week.