It is with great pleasure that we introduce our new DUCCS Board members. Please join us in welcoming them. We look forward to their participation and their contribution to the organization.
Since its inception DUCCS has been a great resource bridging the academic passage to the world of private and clinical practice, and remains a wonderful link for former Felllows to our academic roots. Dean A. Bramlet MD FACC FAHA FNLA
The DUCCS Website is now live. Thank you to the Cardiology Division for their support, thank you to Daniel Beyer and his team and to EVERYONE who has made this possible! We hope that you find the DUCCS website full helpful. If there is information that you would like included, please let us know.
n engl j med 372;9 nejm.org february 26, 2015
The pdf file: nejmp1501253
Eldoret is a city of about 250,000 in western Kenya, at an elevation of 6500 ft. It is home to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital and the Moi University School of Medicine. For the past several years, Duke has been working to establish a cardiology Center of Excellence there. I responded to a DUCCS newsletter about this effort. My wife Jean and I spent October and November, 2014 there.
The experience was both heartwarming and heartbreaking. The Kenyan people are friendly and welcoming, hardworking and eager to learn. I did a lot of teaching, most directly related to patients on the cardiac unit. The spectrum of heart disease was very different from the USA. Rheumatic valve disease is frequent, aggressive, and causes severe stenosis and regurgitation early. The youngest patient I saw with severe valvular disease was 8 years old. Pulmonary hypertension is also common, and seems due mostly to indoor air pollution from cooking with small fires in small, poorly ventilated homes. Ninety percent of the population outside of major urban areas still cooks this way. Needless to say, this problem affects women mostly, and the severe elevation in pulmonary pressures causes profound right heart failure among women in their 40’s. Congenital disease, either unrecognized or untreated, was also frequent. I saw only 2 STEMIs, 2 NSTEMIs, and no one with a bradyarrhythmia requiring a pacer. [Perhaps the shorter life span does not allow for the conduction disease to develop.]
The available drugs were adequate, thanks to the large number of generics in most classes. Urgent surgery is impossible to achieve now. Elective surgery can be arranged but takes weeks or months to accomplish. There is lots of interest in improving that situation over time.
There is a huge amount of work to be done. We saw ourselves as part of an effort that will take decades to achieve the goals of prevention, early detection, and appropriate treatment. It was fun to work alongside our Kenyan colleagues to move this process along.
John Burks
We honor the memory of Dr. Michael Davidson, the son of long-time DUCCS member, Robert M. Davidson, M.D. Michael died following a shooting while seeing patients in his clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston on January 20th. Michael had a long connection with Duke Medical Center, having been born there, while his dad, Bob, was a Cardiology fellow at Duke.
Although he grew up mostly in Southern California, he subsequently attended Princeton University and Yale Medical School, and then once again, returned to Duke Medical Center, where he did his internship and residency in Surgery at Duke, and spent a year in the lab of Dr. Robert Lefkowitz and Walter Koch, doing research on G-Protein receptors in the heart. During his residency, he met Terri Halperin, a medical student at Duke, and they subsequently married at the Duke Hillel facility on campus in 2001. They then moved to Boston, where Michael completed his surgical residency and went on to a fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He took an additional year in the cardiac cath lab, where he learned interventional cardiology, which he would later combine with his surgical training to pioneer the “hybrid” procedure approach to cardiac interventions. Following his training program, he joined the cardiac surgery staff of the Brigham in 2006, and later became the Director of Endovascular Cardiac Surgery. Being the “complete” interventionalist, he would often perform a diagnostic cardiac catheterization, and then take the patient to the OR for surgery or perform a transcatheter valvular or aortic intervention with other members of the team. He enjoyed teaching, and was an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard University School of Medicine.
He is survived, by his parents and wife, his sister Hillary, and children Kate, Liv and Graham, along with a yet to be born baby daughter. He will be deeply missed, not only by his family, friends and colleagues, but by his many grateful patients.
Contributed by Bob Davidson
After 5 long and exciting years at Duke that have included the honor of serving as the DUCCS Fellow, I will be heading to Yale University, as Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiology. My focus will be on building their Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant division. I will strive to be the point person for many future Duke-Yale collaborations. Beyond the role of DUCCS as a tool for setting up clinical trials, I believe that its other great resource is allowing early career members the ability to interact with some true leaders in the field of medicine. During my fellowship, in particular, I had the honor of working with Dr. O’Connor, who I believe is one of the greatest mentors in medicine today. I played the closest attention to every single word he said, tried my best to copy his methods, and ordered all the leadership books in his office bookshelf from amazon to read myself. I think these interactions were worth their weight in gold. As I move to the territory of New Haven, CT, I hope that I can count on the many mentors. Please email me (tariqahmadmd@gmail.com) with advice, comments, or anything else as I make this big transition.
Dear DUCCS colleague,
I hope the New Year is starting off well for you. After 31 years, I have decided for positive reasons to leave Duke Cardiology for an exciting new opportunity in a senior leadership role at Inova Health System, an independent academic health system in the metro Washington DC area that is building a new medical school. I will oversee all cardiovascular services at six hospitals and cardiac issues for the Washington Redskins, bring in the academic component, and take part on the senior leadership team. I will still have a Duke appointment and, of course, my basketball tickets, as well as a home base in this area.
You have been a great friend and colleague and will remain so. I know this comes with disappointment to some as we have achieved much success over the past decade. I think this opportunity will afford me the skills to make even greater changes for Duke one day. Dr. Joe Rogers will be the interim chief.
Thank you for all you do for DUCCS! Now I will be a Northern Virginia DUCCS member!
Chris
