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Basmah Safdar, MD, FACEP

Professor of Emergency Medicine; Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs and Development, Emergency Medicine; Co-Chair, Chest Pain Center

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Basmah Safdar, MD, FACEP

Research Summary

Dr. Safdar is an internationally recognized clinician scientist and clinical trialist in sex and gender-specific research with a focus on microvascular health, following its systemic thread through dysfunction of the heart, brain and COVID-19. She led a national collaborative initiative on Gender-Specific Research in Emergency Care. This multidisciplinary and multi-institutional effort is aimed to set the agenda for sex- and gender-specific research in emergency care research for the next decade. Dr. Safdar's second area of interest is bringing equity to physician workforce through systems-based solutions for professional development of women in medicine. She has also served as President of Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine (AWAEM). Dr. Safdar also serves in leadership roles at the Society of Emergency Medicine, American Heart Association, National Women Veterans Health Strategic Healthcare Group and International Society of Gender Medicine.

Specialized Terms: Sex- and gender-specific research; Endothelial reactivity; Microvascular disease; Cardiac biomarkers; cerebral small vessel disease; physical activity, disparities, COVID-19, disparities.

Extensive Research Description

Dr. Safdar has been following the sex-specific signals of microvascular dysfunction for the past two decades. Her original work on physiological reactivity testing in chest pain patients helped uncover a signal for microvascular dysfunction in low-moderate risk ED chest pain patients. This discovery led to the use of cardiac PET/CT in describing a clinical phenotype of coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD) in ED patient. Her team has described the clinical profile of these patients from ED settings, identified a potential biomarker with a prognostic role in these patients as well as described other determinants such as electrocardiographic signatures and short-term outcomes for these patients. Yale is pleased to be one of the few EDs in the country to routinely evaluate chest pain patients for CMD. Dr. Safdar leads the Yale CMD biorepository that prospectively enrolls patients with CMD along with a biorepository including genetic samples for future testing. The next direction of her work is to assess the role of sex and endothelial dysfunction in precision based personalized medicine.


Coauthors

Research Interests

Cardiovascular Diseases; Chest Pain; Emergency Medicine; Exercise Therapy; Leadership; Women's Health; Clinical Trial; Microvascular Angina; Healthcare Disparities; Translational Research, Biomedical; Cerebral Small Vessel Diseases; COVID-19

Public Health Interests

Women's Health

Selected Publications

Clinical Trials

ConditionsStudy Title
Diseases of the Kidney & Urinary TractThe Impact of Phosphate Metabolism on Healthy Aging