It started like any other day—until it wasn’t. On the morning of Thursday, February 20, Frank Parlatore, Jr., a member of the Environmental Services team at Mount Sinai Queens, was preparing for his shift when he collapsed in the operating room locker room. Frank had...
At Mount Sinai Morningside, Access to Clinical Trials and Novel Devices Is Addressing Disparities in the Treatment of Heart Failure
Mount Sinai Morningside, under the leadership of Sean Pinney, MD, Chief of Cardiology and an expert in heart failure, is eliminating health disparities among the communities most affected by cardiovascular disease and heart failure.
One method is to give patients access to a wide range of clinical trials that employ innovative medications and devices to detect and treat congestive heart failure.
For example, patients can benefit from a groundbreaking device that uses voice recognition to identify congestion. Patients speak into a smartphone from their homes, and special software enables doctors in the hospital to analyze their speech patterns for signs of congestion. The medical team can then act on that data to prevent future heart failure hospitalization.
One area of focus is the treatment of cardiac amyloidosis, a condition in which the body overproduces a protein that causes the heart to stiffen and eventually fail. About six percent of Black people living in New York are carriers of the gene that cause amyloidosis. Sarcoidosis, which causes pulmonary disease, heart disease, and heart arrythmias, is another condition found disproportionately in the Black population. If detected, both these conditions can be treated.
The Mount Sinai Morningside team has made it a priority to identify patients with these conditions in Harlem and Morningside Heights, and all the communities the hospital serves. Clinical trials are underway to diagnose and treat patients with more effective medications.
“These clinical trials represent the next generation of treatment for heart failure and have demonstrated their effectiveness in enabling patients to live fuller and longer lives,” said Dr. Pinney. “The Mount Sinai Morningside team is working hard to build trust for these trials and to demonstrate the potential value to those who can benefit most.”
For hospitalized patients, Mount Sinai Morningside is the lead site for a trial of aquapheresis, a treatment to remove excess fluid from patients who are experiencing a condition called fluid overload because of worsening heart failure.
One example of an innovative device is the AccuCinch® by Ancora Heart, which can be placed inside the heart with a minimally invasive procedure to reduce stress on the walls of the heart, allowing it to beat more efficiently.
The cardiology team also employs a novel ablation procedure to quiet the nerves that prevent the body’s ability to store blood, thereby preventing congestion from developing inside the chest and the lungs.
Hospitalized patients also have access to emerging devices such as a micro axial flow pump that is surgically implanted in the heart, which is used to treat patients with worsening heart failure and resulting kidney failure.
