ESC Acute CardioVascular Care 2022 to focus on management of cardiac emergencies

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Feb 25 2022

Cutting edge management of urgent heart problems will be revealed during ESC Acute CardioVascular Care 2022, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

Acute cardiovascular care focuses on patients with life-threatening conditions such as heart attack, cardiac arrest, acute heart failure and cardiogenic shock. The annual congress of the Association for Acute CardioVascular Care (ACVC), a branch of the ESC, takes place 18 to 19 March online.

New scientific findings will be showcased in the abstracts. Among them:

• Do heart attack symptoms predict the likelihood of survival?
• Sex differences in treatment and mortality of patients with cardiogenic shock.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose and treat acute coronary syndrome.
• Elevated troponin and long-term outcome of patients with COVID-19.
• Novel predictor of neurological outcome after cardiac arrest.

Discover the latest insights into dealing with acute cardiac issues in patients with cancer. Dr. Konstantin Krychtiuk, scientific chair of the congress said: "Treatment of cardiac emergencies caused by cancer and anti-cancer therapies is an emerging field. Increasingly in clinical practice we are consulted by oncologists about acute coronary syndrome, acute heart failure and other critical heart conditions. Clinical trials of these diseases have often excluded those with cancer and during this session we will hear how experts manage cardiac emergencies in these patients."

Pregnant women have also been excluded from studies and a session is devoted to cardiovascular emergencies around pregnancy. "These are complex situations since two lives at stake," said Dr. Krychtiuk. "We see heart attacks in older pregnant women, for example. We do however also see other forms of heart attacks, caused by dissection and it is debatable whether we should follow the standard practice of placing a stent to restore blood flow and then giving blood thinners for several months to prevent clots. Leaders in the field will provide guidance on what is safe to do in such scenarios."

Also on the agenda: state-of-the-art in cardiogenic shock, a life-threatening condition in which the heart suddenly fails to pump sufficient blood to the organs. Dr. Krychtiuk pointed out: "Cardiogenic shock is usually caused by a very large heart attack where 50% or more of the heart's function is lost within seconds. Even with fast treatment using high-tech machines to help or replace the circulation, only around half of patients survive. In the meeting we will explore what happens in the body during cardiogenic shock and how that might be influenced with novel therapies."

Not to miss: how to move the needle in outcome of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Cardiac arrest is lethal within minutes if untreated and fewer than one in five patients survive. Here we also have high-tech therapies but the actions that really make a difference are bystanders performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and shocking the patient with an automated external defibrillator (AED) before the ambulance arrives. This session will focus on teaching CPR to laypeople and schoolchildren, the most effective locations and signage for AEDs, and innovative citizen responder programmes which use apps to alert bystanders when a victim is nearby."

Dr. Konstantin Krychtiuk, scientific chair of the ESC congress

Digital health has the potential to transform other aspects of acute cardiac care too: hear how AI could warn cardiac intensivists of impending life-threatening situations. Dr. Krychtiuk explained: "Each patient in the intensive care unit generates thousands of data points on bodily functions every minute. Clinicians have developed their own approaches for recognizing worrying patterns, but AI may be able to identify serious problems one or two hours earlier."

Also of interest: the impact of climate on acute cardiovascular conditions. "Climate change is a real threat to the planet and to heart health," noted Dr. Krychtiuk. "Leaders in this rapidly advancing field will give up-to-the-minute information on how the environment affects the heart and what to expect in the future as this problem becomes more and more relevant."

Stay tuned for: top tips on treating women with urgent heart problems. "Women have been under-represented in medical research and there is growing recognition that we cannot just apply the results of clinical trials that enrolled mostly men," said Dr. Krychtiuk. "In this session experienced practitioners will share their top three pointers for managing women with three urgent problems: cardiogenic shock, cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome."

The meeting brings together cardiologists, intensivists, anaesthesiologists, internists, cardiac surgeons, nurses, paramedics and other allied professionals who care for acutely ill cardiac patients.