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With enthusiasm and a shared sense of purpose, experts in women and heart disease gathered in Ottawa this April for the first Canadian Women’s Heart Health Summit. Attendees included leading figures in clinical care and research from across North America. The event aimed to lay the groundwork for...

In the 1950s, available advice on women and heart health largely consisted of information on how to help husbands recover from their heart attacks. As the famous ad says, we’ve come a long way, baby. Progress is being made in addressing women’s heart health, progress that was amply demonstrated at...

Every research institute is driven by its army of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. They bring their enthusiasm and curiosity to the lab each day and create new collaborative relationships between research groups, both down the hall and around the globe. The Beat spoke with four graduate...

Qingdao is a metropolis on the northeastern coast of China. Like many Chinese cities, it has seen explosive growth. In the past decade, Qingdao’s population has more than tripled to nearly 9 million people. Such growth has spurred the need to expand and modernize medical facilities and programs. In...

In the recently released SCImago Institutions Rankings [SIR] World Report on the research impact of institutions and companies worldwide, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute placed 57th out of 3,042 organizations. The ranking, conducted by the SCImago Research Group, assessed the quality and...

Great strides have been made over the last 40 years in reducing the number of Canadians who smoke. Yet, smoking tobacco remains a leading cause of preventable illness, hospitalization and death. People who smoke daily average twice as many days in hospital as people who have never been daily smokers...

Somewhere between traditional cardiologists and cardiac surgeons sit interventional cardiologists. Like surgeons, interventionists get blood on their gowns in the process of correcting structural problems of the heart, but their approach is more subtle and less invasive. Spending their days in the...

To new cardiac anesthesiology residents, Dr. Jean-Yves Dupuis explains that it may be hard for them to predict the twists and turns their careers might take. “I tell them that the day I finished my internship back in 1979, I swore I would never go back to a university hospital—I wanted to travel the...

In March, Dr. Rob Beanlands was appointed Chief of Cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He brings extensive career experience in cardiovascular imaging and a passion for patient-centred care and education to his new position. Dr. Beanlands takes over from Dr. Terrence Ruddy, Chief...

A renowned cardiac surgeon, a champion of innovation, and an experienced and respected administrator, Dr. Thierry Mesana is also a passionate advocate for the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. On September 11, the Heart Institute announced his appointment as its third President and CEO, to...

Shoehorned into a small room, the first positron emission tomography (PET) scanner at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute made possible a dedicated PET imaging service for heart patients one day a week. That was in 1995, and cardiologist Rob Beanlands, MD, physicist Rob deKemp, PhD, and nuclear...

Atrial fibrillation is a complex condition in that its causes vary from person to person, impacting its underlying mechanisms, what triggers episodes and which treatments are effective in each individual. In addition, afib can be difficult to diagnose because it is often episodic nature and in some...

It takes time and nurturing to grow a top-flight hospital. The University of Ottawa Heart Institute, which began largely as an extension of the Ottawa Civic Hospital when its doors first opened in 1976, has matured to become Canada’s foremost cardiovascular centre. Superior expertise in surgical...

The health benefits of regular physical activity are well documented and hard to overstate, but too often they are left out of the doctor–patient conversation. In December 2015, JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, published the Viewpoint “ Making Physical Activity Counseling a...

As commentaries on radiation go, Peter Parker likely summed it up best: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Although no one at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute has had to deal with the complications of acquiring superpowers from a radioactive spider, the staff is profoundly aware...

The 9p21 risk variant is the strongest known common genetic risk factor for heart disease in Caucasians and Asians. Beginning with the discovery of 9p21 in 2007, studies have consistently shown that having one copy of a genetic variation in 9p21 increases a person’s risk of heart disease by 15 to 20...