This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Annual Heart in Diabetes conference highlights intersection of diabetes, cardiovascular health, kidney disease
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
PHILADELPHIA — Leading experts from a range of specialties will once again come together to address the relationship between type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular and renal disease along with the latest research demonstrating their interconnectedness, according to organizers behind the third annual Heart in Diabetes conference.
The 3-day CME conference, described as where the heart, kidney and diabetes meet in clinical practice, will take place Friday through Sunday at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel. The agenda includes sessions that span the subspecialties from cardiology, lipidology and endocrinology to nephrology, hepatology and primary care, with an emphasis on the latest guidelines and data from important CV outcomes trials.
“The third Heart in Diabetes meeting is happening at a time when there has been an avalanche of data, even over the past year since the last meeting,” Mikhail Kosiborod, MD, FACC, FAHA, director of cardiometabolic research at St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a conference co-chair, told Healio. “It’s unbelievable to me how this field — the intersection of cardiology and diabetes — has completely exploded. We see data coming from right and left, all pointing in the same direction, and the emerging message is it really matters how you treat type 2 diabetes. We have several classes of medications that have emerged as clear winners when it comes to preventing the two most common and morbid complications of type 2 diabetes, which are cardiovascular and kidney complications.”
This year’s meeting will include deep dives for several large diabetes and CV outcomes trials presented this year, including the CREDENCE, REWIND and PIONEER-6 trials discussed at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions in June, as well as mechanistic studies like EMPA-HEART and the icosapent ethyl study REDUCE-IT, unveiled at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November.
“One of the things we are going to be concentrating on is what do these studies mean for practicing clinicians?” Kosiborod said. “We now have an ever-expanding group of agents with proven benefits. How do you implement them? Which drugs do you use in which patients, and in which sequence do you use them? Where do you start? We have an embarrassment of riches in the field right now, and for many of these agents, we have seen really dramatic benefits. That is what we will try to address.”
The meeting, which brings together cardiologists, endocrinologists, nephrologists, lipidologists, internists, family clinicians and other professionals, will feature discussions on lipid disorders, glucose abnormalities, acute coronary syndrome, congestive heart failure, atherosclerosis, vascular disease conditions and kidney disease — and how each of the conditions are related.
Conference highlights include the following:
Heart in Diabetes with Circulation will feature presentations on the effects of SGLT2 inhibitors on hemoglobin with Shinichi Goto, MD, PhD, metformin in youths with type 1 diabetes with Jane E.B. Reusch, MD, and results from the IMPROVE-IT study on the effects of ezetimibe in patients with diabetes with Robert P. Giugliano, MD.
Heart in Diabetes with the Journal of the American College of Cardiology will include presentations on the influence of chronic kidney disease on outcomes in patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease undergoing coronary revascularization with Michael E. Farkouh, MD, hypoglycemia and elevated troponin in patients with diabetes and CAD with Paulo C. Rezende, MD, PhD, and CV and limb outcomes in patients with diabetes and peripheral artery disease with Cecilia C. Low Wang, MD.
Two debates during the meeting will focus on whether to form a specialty in cardiometabolic medicine (featuring Robert H. Eckel, MD, and Sergio Fazio, MD, PhD) and on whether treating high triglycerides is important in the prevention and management of CVD (featuring Peter P. Toth, MD, PhD, and Norman E. Lepor, MD).
An outline of practice recommendations in 2019, including overviews of the AACE diabetes algorithm by George Grunberger, MD, and American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association lipid guidelines by Laurence Sperling, MD.
A panel discussion on the preferred medication for a patient with type 2 diabetes and established CVD, including a case presentation and arguments for or against the use of a GLP-1 receptor agonist, SGLT2 inhibitor, pharmaceutical-grade icosapent ethyl or a proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitor. The panel includes Yehuda Handelsman, MD, FACP, MACE, FNLA, Mansoor Husain, MD, Daniel Einhorn, MD, Michael Miller, MD, and Christie M. Ballantyne, MD.
The weekend will also include two product theaters, a dinner symposium, abstract oral presentations (to be published in Clinical Cardiology) and the presentation of the “luminary in cardiometabolic medicine” award to Valentin Fuster, PhD.
“This is one of the few meetings that does not belong to a medical society,” Handelsman, medical director and principal investigator of the Metabolic Institute of America in Tarzana, California, and a conference co-chair, told Healio. “This is a true meeting of the minds that includes cardiologists, endocrinologists and nephrologists looking at this intersection in medicine, which no other meeting does, and the content is practically all clinical. Here, we have a group of people discussing what studies like EMPA-REG and REDUCE-IT mean. How should we use the information? Who should manage the patients? You don’t typically see this interaction among multidisciplinary providers.”
The Cardiology Today , Endocrine Today, Healio Family Medicine and Healio Internal Medicine staffs will provide coverage from Heart in Diabetes 2019, including reports on the sessions, on-site video interviews and much more. For more information on the Heart in Diabetes conference and registration, visit www.heartindiabetes.com. – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosures: Handelsman and Kosiborod are co-chairs of the Heart in Diabetes conference.