Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute

Long Beach Medical Center and MemorialCare Medical Group join forces to create the Women's Heart Center combatting the Number 1 killer of women: heart disease FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., Feb. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- MemorialCare, a prominent nonprofit Southern California integrated health system, has announced the launch of the Women's Heart Center at the MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute – a specialized center dedicated solely to expertise in education, prevention, early diagnosis, and timely management of women-specific cardiac presentations across their lifespan. The Women's Heart Center's first site will be in conjunction with Long Beach Medical Center and MemorialCare Medical Group, with future plans to expand to additional MemorialCare sites in Orange County. This type of sub-specialized program is an emerging field in healthcare helping bridge gender inequality in cardiac care and improve outcomes for women with heart disease. To lead a dynamic and distinctive program such as this, MemorialCare has recruited and appointed Nissi Suppogu, M.D. as the medical director of the Women's Heart Center. Dr. Suppogu is fellowship trained, meaning she has two years of additional sub-specialty training and education in women's heart health. "While traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors such as obesity, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes do affect both men and women, there is now recognition of specific risk factors for women and cardiovascular disease such as: stress with anxiety and depression, preterm delivery, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes, autoimmune disease, and cancer treatment," says Dr. Suppogu. "For instance, about 50% of women that have heart attacks do not actually have blocked coronary arteries, but instead the tiny blood vessels in their hearts are affected which is referred to as microvascular disease. These issues can cause various symptoms that aren't just chest pain. It's crucial for specialized programs like the Women's Heart Center to understand this difference in symptoms and look beyond blocked arteries." The Women's Heart Center at MemorialCare differentiates itself from other programs by providing the gold standard of care for women, including invasive procedures like coronary function testing for microvascular disease and testing for vasospasm, to ensure a precise diagnosis. The Women's Heart Center's care extends to all women from pre-conception planning, care during pregnancy, early menopause, menopause and beyond, serving anyone from the age of 18 and older. Research will also hold a crucial role in shaping the plan of care. Today's women will contribute to the future health of the next generation of women while also receiving advanced treatment opportunities only available through research studies and clinical trials. "An advanced sub-specialized program, such as the Women's Heart Center, is only made possible with the recruitment of Nissi Suppogu, M.D., a women's heart health and disease specialist," says David Shavelle, M.D., chief of cardiology, MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute, MemorialCare. "In addition to being a cardiologist and her training in General Cardiology, she is fellowship-trained in Women's Heart Health, which involved two years of specialized training at the Barbara Streisand Women's Heart Health Center at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute. We are grateful to offer this level of sub-specialized care to women in our families and community." The closest program of its kind is more than 20 miles away from the greater Long Beach area, filling a major gap in women's cardiac care in the South LA and North OC communities. The Women's Heart Center also offers second opinion services for women, who continue to experience cardiac symptoms, even after having diagnostic testing but were told that there is nothing wrong with their heart, and may need more advanced testing to discover the issue. This is especially important if they've been told they had a heart attack, but no blockages were found in their blood vessels or if they feel they haven't received an accurate diagnosis in the past. "Women can perceive changes in their body and symptoms very well, but since we are so busy with family, career and friends, we tend to put ourselves last," says Dr. Suppogu. "I encourage all women to know their numbers and recognize their symptoms such as chest pain, chest pressure, chest tightness along with dizziness, fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain radiating to the back, neck, or left arm (associated with exercise or rest) to seek timely help. Don't delay your care, remember how many people need you. It is time for us to work together, to advocate for our health and to change the trajectory of cardiovascular disease outcomes in women." The MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute is a premier institution in Southern California that specializes in offering the least invasive approaches for complex cardiovascular issues through minimally invasive procedures using catheters or tiny incisions so patients can experience rapid recoveries, less scarring, faster healing, and avoid traditional open-heart surgery. Distinguished as a leader in heart and vascular care, the MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute offers personalized prevention programs, world-renowned physicians, leading diagnostic screenings, advanced treatment, rehabilitation and leading-edge cardiovascular research. About MemorialCare MemorialCare is a not-for-profit, integrated health care delivery system with 225 care locations including leading hospitals—Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, Long Beach Medical Center and Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach; MemorialCare Medical Group and Greater Newport Physicians MemorialCare; MemorialCare Research Program; MemorialCare Select Health Plan; and numerous outpatient health, imaging, surgery, urgent care, physical therapy, breast health and dialysis centers throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties. Accolades include Nation's Best Health Systems and Workplaces, Top 50 U.S. Hospitals and Cardiovascular Hospitals, 10 Largest Children's Hospitals, 100 Best Hospitals - Spine and Prostate Surgeries, Best of Orange County and Long Beach Hospitals and Medical Groups, U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals and "high performing" in 31 clinical categories and Newsweek World's Best Hospitals, Top 100 Hospitals, Best Maternity Hospitals – and more. Visit memorialcare.org. SOURCE MemorialCare

MONDAY, Jan 29, 2024 -- Fatty liver disease can cause liver damage and can be one health effect of long-term heavy drinking. Now, research shows that the illness can prove even more deadly for women who drink than for men. Also called steatotic liver disease, the condition involves the steady accumulation of excess fat in the body's major blood-cleansing organ. An impaired liver can have a major downstream effect on health, noted study lead author Dr. Susan Cheng . “Steatotic liver disease is a major and increasingly prevalent condition that is likely an underlying precursor to many conditions, including those involving the heart,” said Cheng, who directs the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging at Cedar-Sinai's Smidt Heart Institute in Los Angeles. "We are paying even more attention to steatotic liver disease because we are seeing how it tracks closely with established cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes," Cheng added in a Cedars-Sinai news release. Not all forms of the disease are caused by excessive alcohol use, however. Two subsets of steatotic liver disease are linked to excessive drinking: Alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) and metabolic dysfunction-associated and alcohol-related liver disease (MetALD). The new study was published in the February issue of the Journal of Hepatology . In their research, Cheng's group used U.S. federal government health data on over 10,000 adults. This group's health was tracked beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As part of the data, all participants underwent liver scans and other medical exams. About a fifth of the study group developed some form of fatty liver disease over time, the researchers found, and men were twice as likely to have the condition as women. However, over a follow-up period averaging about 27 years, women with fatty liver disease had twice the odds of dying compared to men. When it came to the odds of dying from alcohol-related fatty liver disease, specifically, the gender gap remained. Women with ALD had a 160% higher risk of dying than men with the condition, and they also had an 83% higher odds of dying from MetALD, Cheng's team found. The 'Met' in MetALD refer to metabolic issues -- obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol -- that can also trigger fat buildup in the liver. According to the researchers, women with any of these risk factors need to be especially cognizant of their drinking, since a combination of heavy drinking plus metabolic issues make fat build up in the liver more likely. It's still not clear, however, why the female liver may be especially vulnerable to these changes. Cheng and her team plan more research to figure that out, as well as identifying how women's risks might be reduced. Sources Cedars-Sinai, news release, Jan. 26, 2024 Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions. Posted January 2024 More news resources FDA Medwatch Drug Alerts Daily MedNews News for Health Professionals New Drug Approvals New Drug Applications Drug Shortages Clinical Trial Results Generic Drug Approvals Subscribe to our newsletter Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

About 1 in 3 people with atrial fibrillation — the most common type of heart rhythm disorder — do not know they have the condition, which is problematic considering it increases the risk of stroke, heart failure and other cardiac complications. To address this problem, Cedars-Sinai developed an algorithm that can detect an abnormal heart rhythm in people not yet showing symptoms. This week, the health system published research on the algorithm in JAMA Cardiology. The study found that the AI model does a good job of identifying hidden signals in common medical diagnostic testing and could help physicians better prevent strokes and other heart-related complications in people with atrial fibrillation Researchers within Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute began developing the algorithm a couple of years ago to take routine electrocardiograms (ECGs) and use them to predict different cardiovascular disease processes, said Dr. Neal Yuan, who is a cardiologist and one of the study’s authors. They trained and tested the model using nearly a million ECGs from patients seen at six different VA hospitals, as well as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The algorithm makes predictions using “a complicated equation involving the 20,000 values that make up an ECG,” Dr. Yuan explained. The numbers used to make this equation come from plugging in thousands of ECGs into the model one at a time. With each ECG, the model tests the prediction ability of the equation. Based on how right or how wrong the prediction was, the model then makes adjustments to the equation. Over time, after it sees many examples, the algorithm’s equation becomes finely tuned, he said. “One of the ongoing challenges in deep learning and machine learning is ensuring that a model that is developed using data from one group of individuals still works just as well when it is used in other populations. The early history of machine learning is filled with cautionary tales of models that did not generalize well,” Dr. Yuan pointed out. For example, early facial recognition algorithms were known to perform significantly worse when applied to individuals of color because they were trained on datasets of mainly white faces, he noted. Additionally, Amazon used a hiring algorithm a few years ago that systematically discriminated against women because it was trained on the resumes and profiles of existing employees who were predominantly men, Dr. Yuan added. For this study, Cedars-Sinai was “intentionally rigorous” about testing the model on various patient subgroups, including women, patients younger than 65, patients older than 65, Black patients, patients with few medical comorbidities and patients with many comorbidities, Dr. Yuan explained. “The model performed just as well in these different subgroups and across different medical sites, which reassured us that our model was picking up on features in the ECG that are widely generalizable across all patients,” he declared. Cedars-Sinai hopes that in the future, anytime someone has an ECG performed, an AI model will quickly make a prediction as to whether that individual has a high risk of atrial fibrillation, Dr. Yuan said. If a patient’s risk is high, their doctor can prescribe a more intensive monitoring test such as a patch monitor, he explained. “I think deep learning algorithms are incredibly powerful and will allow us to better use existing tests such as ECGs to predict diseases earlier and more accurately. It allows us to do more with the information that we may already have. This could help start treatments earlier and avoid downstream complications from these diseases,” Dr. Yuan noted. He said that the next step is deploying AI models like Cedar-Sinai’s into large clinical settings and studying how they affect physicians’ practice and patient outcomes. These sorts of studies are currently being planned and some are already underway, Dr. Yuan added.