The 25th anniversary of the Society of Heart Failure Specialists was marked by the annual congress 'Heart Failure 2024', held in Moscow from 7 to 9 December 2024 in hybrid format. The Almazov Centre delegation, comprising seven young scientists, presented 22 oral and two poster presentations at the event.
The symposium, entitled 'Terminal Heart Failure: a doom or not?', was co-chaired by Professor of the Department of Internal Medicine and head of Heart Failure Research Department Maria Sitnikova, who presented a highly relevant analysis of the diagnostic criteria for the terminal stage of CHF, reflecting the new classification approaches that are scheduled to be introduced in Russian cardiology practice from January 2025. The symposium, entitled 'High-tech methods for HF treatment in Russia’, addressed the issue of the vast geography of heart recipients, the importance of expanding the selection criteria for the heart transplantation waiting list (P. Fedotov, head of research laboratory), as well as the difficulties of HF diagnosis and treatment in the long-term period after heart transplantation (M. Simonenko, senior researcher).
Specialists of Heart Failure Research Department, postgraduate students of the Department of Internal Medicine with Clinic, IME students – participants of the anniversary congress.
The young scientists delivered their vivid presentations, and the participants of the Congress were very interested in the challenging clinical cases. Lyubov Korneva, a junior researcher of the Heart Failure Department, cardiologist of Cardiology Department No. 8, presented the cases demonstrating the possibilities of the Almazov Centre in the joint management of patients with extremely severe comorbidity (uncontrolled HIV infection, morbid obesity and hyponatremia in terminal HF). Aylaana Kuular and Ludmila Cheban, postgraduate students of the Department of Internal Medicine with Clinic, shared the results of a five-year follow-up of HFmrEF patients with metabolic risk factors and demonstrated the commonality of this phenotype with HFrEF in terms of prevalence of a number of molecular genetic markers. HF researcher Victoria Galenko presented an assessment of the predictive capabilities of autonomic imbalance indicators in physical rehabilitation of patients with clinically significant HF. Larisa Prokopova, a senior researcher from the HF department, demonstrated the next stage of the validity assessment of prognosis calculators in CHF.
Young scientists – Congress speakers: bottom – A. Kuular, L. Korneva, L. Prokopova, V. Galenko, top – students Kirill Chelnyntsev and Victor Znamensky.
Representatives of the IME Department of Cardiology, Associate Prof. A. Solovieva and Prof. S. Villevalde traditionally highlighted some issues relating to standard medication therapy recommended for use in the new clinical guidelines.
The final day of the Congress was held online. The symposium 'Molecular and genetic markers in the area of CHF’ attracted a significant audience and featured the presentation of the initial findings from collaborative research conducted with the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, entitled 'Microvesicles in the diagnosis of cardiac transplant rejection' (led by P. Fedotov) and 'Molecular aspects of heartbeat modulation' (associate prof. E. Lyasnikova).