Friday, October 15, 2004

ESCAPE, SHOCK-2 to be Featured at 2004 AHA Scientific Sessions
By Julie McKeel

The annual Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association (AHA) feature 4 days of invited lectures, investigative reports, and presentations representing all cardiovascular fields and related disciplines. This year, these will include the main results of two important DCRI trials and numerous other presentations.

This year’s meeting will be held at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 7-10. The Scientific Sessions offer a unique opportunity to gather with colleagues from around the world with a broad range of expertise. The scope and quality of scientific exchange at the Sessions make this the premier cardiovascular research meeting in the world.

DCRI faculty and fellows will participate in at least 19 oral or poster presentations during the week. In addition, the results of the Evaluation Study of Congestive heart failure and Pulmonary Artery Catheterization Effectiveness (ESCAPE) and SHould we inhibit nitric Oxide synthase in patients with Cardiogenic shocK? (SHOCK-2) pilot study will be presented at this year’s conference.

The DCRI’s Dr. Monica Shah and Lynne Stevenson, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, will present the results of the ESCAPE trial on November 9. ESCAPE was a multicenter trial designed to test the long-term safety and effectiveness of treatment guided by PAC monitoring and clinical assessments versus that guided by clinical assessments alone in 500 patients hospitalized with severe heart failure.

The primary end point of ESCAPE was the number of days that patients were hospitalized or dead during the 6 months after randomization. Secondary end points were changes in blood flow through the heart, peak oxygen consumption, and levels of natriuretic peptides, which are proteins produced by the heart in response to overwork. Other secondary end points included PAC-associated complications, resource use, quality-of-life measures, distance walked in 6 minutes, and survival adjusted for patient preferences.

The SHOCK-2 pilot study, which will be presented on November 8, enrolled 79 patients with heart attack and cardiogenic shock at 26 sites in the U.S., Israel, and Europe. The patients were randomly assigned to receive L-NMMA, a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, or a placebo, and the primary endpoint was the incidence of death at 30 days.

The DCRI developed and distributed the case report form, managed and analyzed the data, and provided safety surveillance, randomization, and electrocardiographic (ECG) core laboratory services for the study, which was sponsored by ArgiNOx, Inc.

See http://dcri.org/research/meetings/2004AHA.pdf for a comprehensive list of DCRI presentations being prepared for the Scientific Sessions this year. DCRI will again sponsor a booth at the conference, which will feature flyers and press releases about the latest trial results.

The general goals of the Sessions are to present recent advances in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular disease and stroke as well as new clinical research advances. In addition, the various sessions provide a forum for the exchange of new research by scientists/investigators working in cardiovascular disease and stroke; a review of current patterns in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular disease and stroke; and opportunities to learn about state-of-the-art cardiovascular research and how it applies to clinical practice.

For more information about this year’s Scientific Sessions, please visit http://scientificsessions.org