Dr Jessica Orchard, Senior Research Fellow at the Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney.

One of the major highlights was catching up with colleagues from around the world, and hearing results of a number of late breaking trials presented at the meeting. In particular, the first results of the LIVE-HCM trial led by Prof Rachel Lampert and Prof Mike Ackerman showed no increased risk among HCM patients undertaking vigorous physical activity compared to those who were less active.

I was fortunate to be an invited speaker and panel member in a session entitled, “Doc, my watch says I have AF: Integrating Consumer-Facing Device Findings Into Clinical Care”. My talk was on the legal and ethical considerations for consumer-led screening, diagnosis and event recording. I explored various issues that arise at the regulatory level, the physician level and the consumer level. Importantly, consumer devices are here to stay and we need to focus on adapting the regulatory environment as well as supporting physicians to maximise the benefits and minimise the harms. I was also invited to record a podcast on this topic with ACCEL.

In addition, I had two abstracts accepted for presentation. The first, looked at ECG features of elite athletes in high intensity sports from New Zealand based on data from 10 years of cardiac screening. This work found that abnormal T wave inversion was significantly more common in female athletes and that Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome was the most common diagnosis in this cohort. The research was also selected for inclusion in the ‘Highlights in Sports and Exercise Cardiology’ session at the conference.

The second abstract, ‘Endemic COVID is contributing to significant excess cardiac mortality’, looked at rates of cardiac deaths in the US and other countries before and during different stages of the COVID pandemic. We reported that respiratory viruses (including both COVID and influenza) are strongly linked to cardiovascular deaths and that both vaccinations are also important public health measures in terms of prevention of cardiovascular deaths.
This work was featured in The Limbic’s ‘Five Australian highlights from ACC.23.

Jessica’s abstracts were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC)

https://www.jacc.org/doi/abs/10.1016/S0735-1097%2823%2902750-X

https://www.jacc.org/doi/abs/10.1016/S0735-1097%2823%2902805-X