Volume 4, Issue 1, November 2001
Introducing
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Georgiann Linnemeier, MD
IEPR Medical Director
HeartGen Centers Indianapolis, IN
Site 73
It gives me great pleasure to be appointed as the Medical Director of the International EECP Patient Registry. Permit me to introduce myself. I am the Medical Director of HeartGen Center in Indianapolis, Indiana where I have been involved with EECP since June, 1999. I am trained in Internal Medicine, however, EECP has bceom my primary area of interest. Tom, my husband is an interventional cardiologist. I have three children; Christine and Megan are in college at Boston College, and Laura is in seventh grade. I enjoy running, and participate in 5 and 10K races. I spend most of the late winter and spring training for the Indianapolis 500 festival half-marathon (and it seems to take longer each year!).
Working at HeartGen has provided an excellent opportunity to be involved in providing EECP to a wide variety of patients. As a referral center, we treat from 5-15 patients per day. I am fortunate to be working with a great group of experienced individuals. Dr. Neil Strickland is a HeartGen on days with I am away, Eric Elijah, Michelle Cox, and more recently Lee Newton together represent a vast amount of clinical experience in administering EECP . As a result of their proficiency, I am proud to say that our patient uniformly comment on how much they appreciate the high level of professional and personal care they receive at our center.
As a result of my clinical experience with the benefits of EECP, I have become determined to advance the visibility of EECP into the armamentarium of available therapies for cardiovascular disease. My particular areas of interset are the use of EECP to treat diabetic and elderly patients with angina. I have presented posters at the American Diabetes Assocation and the European Society of Cardiology on the application of EECP in these subgroups, and I am preparing manuscripts on these subjects for submission for publication. I also chair the IEPR diabetes sub-study.
Because the IEPR is a voluntary registry, I recognize that participation requires and "above and beyond" effort on everyone's part. Thus, the Operations Committee has designed data collection to capture significant data points without taxing the resources of your practice. Your participation and commitment to the registry are highly valued.
For the past: IEPR-1 continues to provide material for publications and acknowledgement in peer reviewed journals. For the present: IEPR-2 will further refine our data collection; and, with your commitment, take the IEPR "to the next level."
My vision for the future is a registry consisting of a core group of committed EECP centers reporting high quality data across a wide spectrum of clinical practice, which will provide the necessary information for puclication and thus, recognition of EECP as a mainstream treatment for cardiovascular disease. I look forward to your participation in the registry and to getting to know many of you. I am available to you for your questions or concerns, and I recognize that success requires the mutual cooperation of all involved.
(L to R: Michelle Cox, Dr. Neil Strickland, Eric Elijah)
IEPR Phase 2 will begin patient enrollment in January 2002. Registry information and forms were mailed to all centers October 2001. Questions? Contact Lisa Kennard at 412-624-5217 or Nichole Dwyer at 412-624-3764.
European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2001
Stockholm, SWEDEN
September 2-5, 2001
Lisa Kennard, PhD
IEPR Coordinator
The venue was Stockholm for this year's European Society of Cardiology Congress. Stockholm, the beautiful capital city of Sweden, has been called the Venice of the north because it is situated on many islands making up part of the large archipelago of over 24,000 islands separating Stockholm from the Baltic Sea. The ESC Congress is one of the largest and most important cardiology meetings held annually with over 20,000 participants, both from Europe and elsewhere. Thus it was very exciting that there were three EECP poster presentations. IEPR investigator Dr. Angela Brown of Beaumont Hospital, Dublin; authored the first poster. She described the improvement in exercise tolerance post EECP in patients treated for angina, and the correlation between improvement and level of diastolic augmentation. Drs. William Lawson of SUNY Stony Brook and John Hui of Vasomedical presented a poster reporting research on significant progressive attenuation of renin-angiotensin activation in CAD patients undergoing EECP. The third poster was presented by Dr. Georgiann Linnemeier of HeartGen Inc., the IEPR Medical Director, and described treatment of angina with EECP in the ever increasing population of elderly patients. This group of patients has an increased morbidity and mortality following percutaneous coronary interventions and coronary artery bypass surgery. Thus management of this elderly CAD population poses a major challenge to health care systems. Data from the IEPR demonstrated that EECP is indeed a safe and effective treatment for this group of patients. Dr. Linnemeier's poster was chosen to be one of a group of ten posters that were moderated in a separate session, and generated much interest and many questions.
Recent Presentations
2nd International Congress on Heart Disease July 2001
Predictors of Adverse Outcomes in Treating Angina Patients with Enhanced External Counterpulsation
W Lawson, B Fleishman, K Manzo, E Kennard, R Holubkov, S Kelsey
European Society for Cardiology September 2001
Enhanced External Counterpulsation for the Treatment of Angina in the Elderly: Safety, Response, and Durability of Benefit
G Linnemeier, W Lawson, E Kennard, R Holubkov
Beneficial Effects of EECP on the Renin-Angiotensin System in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease
W Lawson, J Hui
Heart Failure Society of America September 2001
Is Diastolic Augmentation an Important Predictor of Treatment Completion for Patients with Left Ventricular Dysfunction Undergoing Enhanced External Counterpulsation for Angina?
O Soran, A Michaels, E Kennard, S Kelsey, R Holubkov, A Feldman
What Factors Predict Congestive Heart Failure During Treatment of Angina Patients with Enhanced External Counterpulsation
W Lawon, E Kennard, R Holubkov, J Roberts, A Feldman, J Strobeck
Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics September 2001
Efficacy of Enhanced External Counterpulsation (EECP) for Patients Who are Not Candidates for Coronary Revascularization: Immediate and One-Year Clinical Outcomes from the International EECP Patient Registry
Next Newsletter: February 2002