President's Message

summer 2020

Dear FCACC Members:

This month’s message comes to you from Diego Sadler, MD, FACC, Chair of the FCACC Cardio-oncology Committee. Diego has lead the chapter’s effort to obtain a national Board of Governors grant that fueled research and created resources for this emerging field. Congratulations to him and the entire committee for their excellent work over this past year that has culminated in collaboration, open resources on our website and publication in scientific journals.

Stay safe,

David Perloff, MD, FACC 

FCACC Cardio-oncology Committee

The Florida ACC Chapter Cardio-oncology Committee has been active since 2018 with members from multiple areas of our state, from both private practice and academic institutions. Our goal is to promote awareness and education in cardio-oncology to meet the public health needs of adequate access to quality care for patients with cancer and heart disease and those with cardiovascular complications of cancer treatment.

We believe that a strong partnership with oncology organizations constitutes the base for cooperation, education and growth for physicians, institutions, and professional societies. To this end, we started a unique model of cooperation with the Florida Chapter of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FLASCO).

Our initial project was successfully completed: our Florida Survey for Cardiologists and Oncologists was presented at scientific meetings (ACC, ICOS) and has now been accepted for publication for JACC Cardio Oncology. Based on the results of our Survey, we developed basic educational materials in 11 topics for cardiology and oncology practitioners, now available at the websites of FCACC and FLASCO. Please check them out and share with your entire team by visiting this link.

Based on the successful model in Florida, we proposed a network for collaboration with many other ACC state Chapters and our proposal was well received: a multistate and international Cardio Oncology collaborative network was launched with many cardiologists and oncologists from both academic and private practice setting from 19 ACC Chapters and 6 ASCO chapters and international members from 10 countries.

This collaborative network recently completed a survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our practices, resources, institutional support, and need for involvement of medical professional societies on data driven policies in health care during health care crises. There were 1,415 respondents, and we collaborated with faculty from multiple leading institutions to report the results of our international survey and produced specific doctors’ opinions based recommendations. Florida was the #1 contributor to this survey with more than 500 respondents.

We are now planning our next set of collaborations and projects and we want to encourage new FCACC members to join us in this new and exciting field. There is so much work to be done and we are very grateful to the FCACC leadership and administration for the unconditional support to our work.

Diego Sadler, MD, FACC