Tyler Locke- Dr. McDonald/Engineering Cardiology Symposium

This week, I spent some time with Dr. Dan McDonald and Dr. Evelyn Horn during outpatient heart failure visits. With Dr. McDonald on Wednesday, I saw many patients with cardiac amyloidosis, a disease in which abnormally folded proteins are deposited in the myocardium. This results in stiffening of the muscle, and presents very similarly to traditional diastolic dysfunction. I learned a lot about the management of this condition, which is dependent on the exact cause of amyloid buildup. In most cases, it is not reversible, and progression can only be slowed. I am thinking this may be an interesting condition to investigate during my thesis work, focused particularly on coronary microvascular effects. There are a lot of parallels between this condition and Alzheimer's, where our lab has previously uncovered some very interesting vascular pathologies.

With Dr. Horn on Thursday, I had some very interesting conversations regarding the relationship between diastolic heart failure and left atrial failure, and how these conditions can be discerned. I got some good ideas here about investigating different parts of the heart and peripheral circulation, and how failure of one part may influence the others.

At the end of the week, I headed back up to Ithaca for the Cornell Cross-Campus Symposium: Engineering in Cardiovascular Health, Disease, and Treatment. Seeing lots of talks and posters about different cardiovascular research projects at the med school, vet school, and engineering school! It has been nice to get a bigger picture view of the cardiac space, and I am looking forward to pushing forward our cardiac imaging project with my new connections in WCM cardiology.

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