Cardiovascular Medicine

Eric J. Velazquez, MD, Section Chief

Daniel Price, MD, Vice Chief, Ambulatory

Nihar Desai, MD, MPH, Vice Chief, Clinical Operations

The cardiovascular section is home to nearly 300 clinician-investigators, physician-scientists, and staff who make meaningful contributions across patient care, research, and educational domains. In the past five years, the section brought on 57 new full-time ladder track faculty to build upon our expertise and create new capabilities. Our faculty have come together through retreats and engagement efforts to advance the 2024 strategic imperatives: section growth and reputation; financial performance and mission responsibility; faculty alignment and engagement; leadership development; and research and clinical excellence integration.

Clinical Care

This committed faculty team is working to broaden clinical programs and expand access to new programs and populations through our ongoing affiliation with Yale New Haven Health. As one example, the section recently expanded its Cardio-Rheumatology Program to provide personalized cardiovascular risk assessment and treatment for patients with autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, scleroderma, psoriatic arthritis, and vasculitis. In addition, the section has expanded its capacity for cardio-obstetrics to manage and treat cardiovascular disease in pregnant patients.

The section clinical faculty participated in 6,000 inpatient encounters and more than 110,000 ambulatory sessions for the department across a rich network of inpatient services at Yale New Haven Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital, Lawrence Hospital, Memorial and Westerly Hospitals, and ambulatory centers.

Research

The section continues its commitment to outstanding research across the entire translational research continuum from basic science to population health. section’s current research portfolio includes dozens of active grant awards supported by nearly $245M in total funding, including more than $64M in new funding during the past year from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, and American Heart Association (AHA), among others. This year, seven section faculty received career development awards.

Faculty members presented groundbreaking clinical research at prestigious conferences, including the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session and the AHA annual conference. Research highlights include the following:

• John K. Forrest, MD, presented the three-year results from the Evolut Low-Risk Trial, an ongoing study of the safety and effectiveness of Medtronic’s supra-annular, self-expanding transcatheter aortic valve replacement systems in low-risk aortic stenosis patients.
• Rachel Lampert, MD, discussed the primary results of the prospective multinational lifestyle and exercise in the LIVE-HCM study.
• Eric J. Velazquez, MD, shared the results of the TRANSFORM-HF study. This five-year comparative effectiveness study examined the effects of torsemide versus furosemide for patients with heart failure.
• Nihar Desai, MD, MPH; Tariq Ahmad, MD, MPH; and F. Perry Wilson, MD, presented results from the PROMPT-LIPID study of 2,500 patients from 100 outpatient providers within Yale New Haven Health.

The section’s future focus is on further expanding our computational biology, informatics research, and implementation science.

Education

The cardiovascular section has a broad educational footprint and robust fellowship programs, which provide the rigorous academic and clinical environment necessary to build a career in academic cardiology.

To continue to improve the training environment, the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine appointed Nikhil Sikand, MD; Cesia Gallegos Kattan, MD, MHS; and Antonio Giaimo, MD, as assistant program directors of the Yale Cardiovascular Medicine Fellowship Program. They join associate program director Parul Gandhi, MD, and program director Edward J. Miller, MD, PhD, in leading the core cardiology fellowship program. The section currently supports 47 clinical fellows across eight programs, including three T32 programs supporting four current fellows.

Fellows from the section received awards for their excellence in medicine this year. Evangelos Oikonomou, MD, DPhil, was recently awarded a competitive postdoctoral fellowship by the national Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, where he will support the design of point-of-care screening programs for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Jiun-Ruey Hu, MD, MPH, was voted Consultant of the Year by residents and interns of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

As part of its ongoing commitment to educating the next generation of cardiology researchers, the section held its first-ever Summer Study Symposium for undergraduate and high school students. Faculty and trainees discussed their programs, personal journeys through science training, and advancements in cardiovascular research.