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PACES Winter Newsletter

By admin | July 28, 2020 | Comments Off on PACES Winter Newsletter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dear PACES members,

I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoying the Holiday Season. 2017 has been an incredible year for PACES as we continue to grow, expand our presence within HRS, and internationally as a global society. I want to thank my incredible executive committee who continues to keep PACES moving forward as well as all the committee chairs and members who make PACES the societal organization I am proud to serve. Below is an update from all of the committees midway through my tenure. If you have suggestions as to things you feel we should be doing or would like to see PACES evolve in other directions please feel free to reach out to me or any member of the EC. Also as a reminder PACES will continue to fund two travel grants for the 2018 HRS meeting in Boston. Pediatric cardiologists from developing countries, outside the US, Canada, and central Europe with at least 2 years of clinical and/or experimental pediatric electrophysiology are eligible. Please send all applications by December 31, 2017 to Thomas Paul MD (tpaul@gwdg.de). An application is attached to this newsletter.

I also want to thank all the members who submitted their names to volunteer for an HRS Committee. The Executive Council has forwarded those names to Thomas Deering, MD (President Elect HRS) and George Van Hare MD (President HRS).

The website, thanks to Yaniv Bar-Cohen, has added a list of programs, in the US, Canada, and internationally that currently or in the past have provided a 4th year fellowship in electrophysiology. If you are aware of a pediatric cardiologist that is interested in EP I would encourage you to direct them to the website. Contact information for Pediatric EP Fellowship Directors can be found on the website.

Andy Blaufox, Scott Ceresnak, and Dominic Abrams are putting the final touches on what should be a great PACES Pre-HRS Symposium Conference on Tuesday May 8. This year’s PACES symposium is entitled: “Leading Change in Pediatric Electrophysiology – Changes in Health Care Delivery and The Future of Care in Pediatric EP.” Over the next few months I will be sending out more information surrounding the upcoming HRS activities.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS & HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE PACES EXECUTIVE COUNCIL!

Mitchell Cohen MD FACC FHRS

President PACES
mitchcohenmd@gmail.com

UPDATE FROM DR. VAN HARE, PRESIDENT HRS

Preparations are well underway for Heart Rhythm 2018 in Boston. Our PACES representatives to the HRS Program Committee, Susan Etheridge and Mitch Cohen, have worked hard on developing some really great sessions. In addition, I’m happy to report that the HRS History Committee decided to honor Paul Gillette at this year’s History session. As most of you know, Paul was the first pediatrician to lead NASPE/HRS and we will be focusing on Paul’s accomplishments and legacy. I have the particular treat of co-chairing the session with Vicki Zeigler.

As I related last year at our PACES Business Meeting at HRS in Chicago, the pediatric community and PACES in particular have immense credibility within HRS, and PACES is seen as a model for how small constituencies within HRS make their voices heard and contribute to the overarching mission of HRS (to end death and suffering due to heart rhythm disorders). I personally am thankful for all the contributions and hard work by members of PACES.

Best wishes for the new year.

GVH

President HRS

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UPDATES FROM PACES AROUND THE WORLD

Research

It is time for our early and mid-career scientists to begin submitting their applications for the prestigious annual awards and grants. Awards and Eligibility criteria can be found on the PACES website.

SADS Foundation Courts K. Cleveland Jr. Young Investigator Awards in Cardiac Channelopathy Research:

As in past years, there will be a basic science award and a translational/clinical science award given to early career professionals. Application deadline is March 17, 2018

PACES Research Patrick Joyce Allied Professional Award:

There will be up to 3 allied professional members with interest and dedication to research to attend Heart Rhythm Scientific Sessions. Application deadline is January 30, 2018

The Paul C. Gillette Pediatric and Congenital Electrophysiology Society (PACES) Research Grant:

Early and mid-career professionals aiming to develop and sustain clinical and translational research directed at children and adults with congenital and acquired electrophysiology diseases are eligible for the award. Application deadline is March 17, 2018

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dr. Seshadri Balaji on winning the outstanding research award in pediatric cardiology at the American Heart Association 2017 scientific sessions for the PACES research project entitled Risk Stratification for Sudden Death in Children with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: an international multi-center study.

The PI’s: for the study were Seshadri Balaji and Maully Shah- along with PACES investigators Frank Fish, Susan Etheridge, Pete Aziz, Mark Russell, Svjetlana Tisma-Dupanovic, Andreas Pflaumer, Narayanswami Sreeram, Petr Kubus, Ian Law; Michal Kantoch, Naomi Kertesz, Margaret Strieper, Christopher Erickson, Jeremy Moore, Stephanie Nakano, Harinder Singh; Philip Chang, Mitchell Cohen, Anne Fournier, Maria Ilina, Richard Smith, Frank Zimmerman, Michaela Horndasch, Walter Li, Anjan Batra, Leonardo Liberman, Robert Hamilton, Christopher Janson, Shubhayan Sanatani, Ilana Zeltser, George McDaniel, Andrew Blaufox and Jason M. Garnreiter.

Finance

PACES is in a strong financial position thanks to the continued support from all of our members. We appreciate everyone’s support through paying dues and contributions. PACES would like to particularly thank Vicki Zeigler for her continued generous support through the Paul Gillette fund. PACES would also like to thank the Patrick Joyce Foundation for their generous contribution to PACES through the Patrick Joyce Fund Run. We are continuing to seek to expand our membership, so please encourage your trainees and fellows to join (it is only $25)! Also, if there are international members who wish to join, please encourage them to consider membership. We are able to offer discounted memberships for people from economically disadvantaged countries. Thanks to everyone for paying their dues on time.

Best regards,
Bryan Cannon

Advocacy

Next year’s AAP annual meeting will have a joint AAP-PACES session on arrhythmias in children. This will be organized by Chris Snyder from Cleveland (Rainbow Babies) who is head of the cardiology section of the AAP.

We are currently in negotiation with ACC to see how we can partner with them on advocacy, guidelines, joint sessions and other areas of mutual interest.

Multiple efforts are underway to increase our international membership and participation.

Happy Holidays,
Seshadri Balaji

Allied Professional

The New AP Nursing Research committee, chaired by Vicki Ziegler, PhD, RN, has been formed and will begin to meet after the New Year. There are a few more openings for members if you are interested! The purpose of the committee is to encourage and stimulate projects related to AP clinical practices and interests, and to provide a platform for scholarly interaction. The only requirement is a desire to learn about and participate in the research process! One of our major goals is to design and implement a multi-center AP research study through PACES. Mentoring and teamwork will be provided!

We continue to develop new patient/parent education printed documents for the PACES website. We are developing new technology formats such as audio-enhanced power point presentations for patient education on the website. A brief user-focused survey for feedback from the site users (patient/parent/health care providers) on what is helpful and what could be improved with this portion of the website is live! The survey be found at https://pacesep.org/patient-resources/

The Document-Sharing section on the member-only portal of the website is a great resource for AP members to share documents which have been useful to them in their clinical practice. We suggest via email a monthly topic for documents to share, but feel free to contribute any documents that you’d like at any time! Please send documents to me at vfreeden@cnmc.org and I’ll get them on the website. Please consider applying for the Patrick Joyce Award. The PACES executive board and research committee will fund up to 3 allied professional members with interest and dedication to research to attend Heart Rhythm Scientific Sessions ($1500 for each) in order to present their research and gain experience and knowledge for research development for PACES allied professionals. Applications are due on 1/30/2018, and can be found on the PACES website.

Happy Holidays to All,
Vicki

If you would like to get involved with PACES, or if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me at vfreeden@cnmc.org.

PACES Travel Grant for International Pediatric Cardiologists from developing countries for HRS/PACES Meeting in Boston in May 2018 will be open for applications until December 31st, 2017. An application form is attached and is also available on the website.

PACES International Case Review Forum
PACES has recently launched the international case review forum, a platform to discuss cases among the international PACES community. The initiative has the primary mission to exchange ideas on arrhythmia cases that are of particular interest for electrophysiologists taking care of children and patients of any age with congenital heart disease. Two cases have already been discussed, the first one coming from Eric Rosenthal in London and the second one from Rafael Correa in Colombia. The platform has received opinions from various parts of the world, which allowed the members both to participate in a collegial dialogue and expand their professional horizons. We thank all the participants for their valuable contributions! The Forum is open to all the PACES members. If you would like to participate, either by submitting a case or contributing with an opinion, please let us know by email. Your valued participation will help develop this global platform for pediatric electrophysiologist to share their experience.

Co-Chairs, PACES International Case Reviews

Ulrich Krause (ukrause1@gwdg.de)
Maria Cecilia Gonzalez (maria.c.gonzalez@uclouvain.be)

Happy Holidays,
Thomas Paul

Education Committee

The Education Committee’s mission is to organize PACES-related educational activities while fostering collaboration amongst PACES members in educational endeavors. The committee has continued to grow and includes: Shahank Behere, Beth Jarosz, Anica Bulic, Sara Cherny David Fairbrother, Peter Fishbach, David Gamboa, Jason Garnreiter, William Goodyer, Anne Greene, Christopher Johnsrude, Shaun Mohan, Kara Motonaga, Akash Patel, Louis Rigos, Eric Silver, Santiago Valdes, Nick Von Bergen, and Mark Shwayder.

Our current initiatives include:

  1. Planning, organizing and developing the pre-HRS PACES symposium. The scheduled symposium is titled “LEADING CHANGE IN PEDIATRIC ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY – CHANGES IN HEALTH CARE DELIVERY AND THE FUTURE OF CARE IN PEDIATRIC ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY.” Details will be coming soon.
  2. Developing PACES CASES, an interactive, case-based teaching module for pediatric cardiology fellows. We are in the production stage of this initiative. Thanks to all of the PACES education committee members that have contributed cases. Several cases are still in the testing phase with the hope to make the modules public soon.
  3. Developing an online pediatric ECG teaching module for cardiology trainees. Organizing and distributing PJRT (Publication EP Journal Review by Trainees), a quarterly succinct report of recent PACES-related journal articles by EP fellows. A special thanks to the fellows on the committee for spear-heading this journal review.
  4. An abstract will be submitted to HRS concerning the analysis of the workforce and training survey that was distributed prior to last HRS.

We are excited to be working on the above activities and are always looking to explore novel educational endeavors. If anyone has any questions/ideas for the committee or is interested in joining the committee, please contact either of us via email.

Sincerely,
Scott Ceresnak, Co-Chair           Andy Blaufox, Co-Chair 
ceresnak@stanford.edu               Ablaufox@Northwell.edu 

Task Force for Prevention of Sudden Death in the Young

The primary care Sudden Death paper has been submitted to the AAP as a Policy Statement updating their previous policy statement from 2012. It has made it to one committee thus far and revisions have been made accordingly and then resubmitted.

The Task Force will be meeting during the Miami “Sudden Cardiac Arrest in the Young: The Second Annual Fouad Mobassaleh Memorial Symposium” Feb 23-24. Details of the exact time and place to be announced.

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this endeavor,
Chris Erickson and Jack Salerno

PACES QA/QI Committee

The newly formed PACES QA/QI Committee has held monthly conference call meetings since July of this year. Since then we have completed basic infrastructure projects to get the committee up and running including: 1) developing a master contact list for those participating in the EP module (MAP-IT) within the IMPACT registry, 2) developing a method for receiving and responding to user feedback through the PACES website (to go live soon!), and 3) creating a shared document space to allow us to work in the cloud across the miles. We these tasks behind us we are setting our sites on our next goal: to solicit user feedback from the PACES community and submit important updates and “fixes” for the EP Module in IMPACT to the NCDR for incorporation into 3.0 coming as early as 2018. Concurrently, Tess Saarel has been leading the effort to create a pediatric / congenital CIED registry and we are in talks with NCDR to see if this module can also be incorporated into the IMPACT registry.

Happy Holidays,
Steve Sesslar, MD

Emerging Leaders Group

At the end of HRS 2017, we had outlined a series of short term goals for the group that included:

  1. A group contact list/spreadsheet that included names, institutions, and research goals. Additionally, a central account that can be accessed by group members to receive and update information
  2. Identify members that are looking for regional mentorship (both research and clinical)
  3. Encourage our members to take the IBHRE examination (primarily CEPS) as well as provide study guides/support
  4. Direct interesting PACES initiatives that may have specific benefit to junior faculty to the group

Thankfully, things have gone well on almost all fronts and progress has been steady. At this stage, have a group of 25 graduating fellows or junior faculty members. We created a google drive account specific to “PacesEmergingLeaders” that allowed us to post our contact and interest spreadsheet as well as create a separate file dedicated to IBHRE preparation. We have a series of 20+ study videos that are equally useful for general electrophysiology and though we do not have final numbers of those signing up for the exam (the deadline was last week), there was great interest and discussion about preparation. After Mitch forwarded the JACC request to have PACES nominations for the ACHD imaging guidelines, we were able to survey the group and provided our primary and alternate nominations.

The PACES Research Committee has expressed interest in partnering with members of the Emerging Leaders group to formalize research mentorship for our emerging faculty. Christopher Janson will be the point of contact (jansonc@email.chop.edu).

As we move forward, we plan to build on the current successes and develop new short- and long-term goals. These include research collaboration, mentorship, and general group sustainability. In general, we also hope that this group leads to more involvement of junior faculty in PACES committees and initiatives as it serves as a springboard to the larger group.

Thanks again for your support and assistance!
Aarti and Johannes

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UPDATES FROM HRS/PACES COMMITTEE REPRESENTATIVES

2018 HRS Scientific Sessions

The 2018 HRS pediatric program is complete and invitations have been sent although the abstract sessions have yet to be created. This year the sessions were created by myself, Mitchell Cohen and Pete Aziz was asked to be an ad hoc member (a new HRS feature). This year HRS asked us to continue to incorporate a few TED type talks into sessions. This was a successful part of the program last year. We have 3 new features. The first is a Master Class. This was featured in an adult ablation session in 2017 and was a success and so each of the programs subsections was asked to create one for this year. This session includes an experienced Master who will be presented an unknown case or cases from 2 panelists and work through the case(s) LIVE. Mitchell, with his extensive and dare I say eclectic education, entitled it “Oh Captain, My Captain” and a beer to the first one to email me the reference for this. The other “suggested” mandate was that we try to incorporate QI into some of the sessions – not an easy task and some thanks in advance to those of you called on to tell us how you do this. Finally, you will see some talks by people from the FDA incorporated into sessions. We have tried to expand the speaker and chair roles to include younger speakers and those from outside the US. As always, there will be debates, rapid fire and nightmare cases that I am sure will be well attended. There will also be a fantastic history session all should try to attend as it is unopposed by other sessions. We have collaborated with the adult CIED team to create a session entitled “Device Therapy for the Future” and with AEPC for a session entitled “Learning and Sharing. Pediatric EP Across the Pond and Across Borders. IMPORTANT NOTE. We will have sessions on Saturday as this was mandated by HRS. Please plan to stay for the Saturday sessions and support your colleagues called on to present. We hope to see all of you there and thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions for this year, we tried hard to incorporate your ideas. Thanks in advance for all the hard work that you do creating, presenting and attending HRS.

Happy Holidays,
Susan Etheridge MD

Scientific Clinical Documents Committee

The SCDC presently has three expert consensus/guideline papers in process with plans for PACES representation on each.

  1. Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy clinical document – Shu Sanatani is serving as the PACES representative for this working group
  2. Neuromuscular disorders – writing committee presently being formed. Invitation to PACES rep is pending
  3. VT ablation document –early in process. Writing group has not been established yet.
  4. At this time, we are not co-sponsoring an expert consensus statement with HRS secondary to financial constraints and the thought we should be planning ahead for either new or updated contemporary documents. Specific topics will be proposed by the Guideline Development Committee (Kannankeril), approved by the EC, and submitted to Anne Dublin to the larger SCDC committee and ultimately the HRS Board.

Happy Holidays,
Anne Dubin MD

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR (2018)

Up Coming PACES Sponsored Events

      • PACES Travel Grant Application Due December 31, 2017

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Sudden Cardiac Arrest in the Young –Nicklaus Children’s Hospital (Miami, FL)

February 23-24

  • PACES Pre-HRS Conference (Boston, MA)

    May 8

  • Heart Rhythm Scientific Sessions (Boston, MA)

    May 9-12

  • Association for European Cardiology-AEPC (Athens, Greece)

    May 9-12

  • PEDIRHYTHM VIII, the World Congress of Pediatric & Congenital Rhythm Disorders 2018 (Munich, Germany)

    October 13-16

  • APHRS Scientific Sessions (Taipei, Taiwan)

    October 17-20

  • Annual International SADS Foundation Conference (Ann Arbor, MI)

    October 26-28

  • International Dead Sea Symposium (Tel Aviv, Israel)

    October 28-31

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