As 2016 winds down, the Ottawa Heart Institute can look back on a remarkable 40 th anniversary year that brought together the extended Heart Institute community in celebration and appreciation. Congratulations Political leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, reached out to share their...
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It was the very uniqueness of the gene that first drew the attention of molecular biologist Patrick Burgon, PhD. “The striking thing about this gene is that it has no other family members,” he said. “That’s what drove my curiosity.” The gene is muscle enriched A-type lamin interacting protein, or...
At the big-picture level, we understand the risk factors for a heart attack, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, and genetics. We also know that a heart attack is caused when plaque buildup in the wall of a coronary artery ruptures and blocks the blood vessel. What...
In October, a crane carefully lowered the University of Ottawa Heart Institute’s first dedicated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner into a narrow access way so that it could be rolled through the exterior wall of the building and into position. By early December, the new MRI facility was fully...
Dr. Ruel has largely shaped the division’s approach to nearly all aspects of patient care while driving translational and clinical research outputs, advanced surgical education, and new forays in surgical innovation
Dr. Peter Liu is chiefly responsible for uniting the Heart Institute’s research division on the hallmarks of teamwork and team spirit
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...
There were a lot of interesting news, research and healthcare policy discussions at this year's conference. Has the Time Come for Precision Medicine? A physician argues that tailoring care to the individual will improve outcomes and reduce costs First National Quality Report on Cardiovascular Care...
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...
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...
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...
Roughly half of our risk of getting heart disease is due to our genetics. The other half is due to age, lifestyle and other environmental factors. Of the genetic half, some of the risk comes from rare genetic variants that have a big impact on a person’s individual risk. Some comes from the additive...
So far in 2016, Heart Institute researchers have won more than $7 million in research funding, including major awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada. Perhaps most remarkable is the Institute’s...
For decades, patients taking the anti-clotting drug warfarin who required the implantation of a pacemaker or implantable cardioverter defibrillator have posed a dilemma. If they are at moderate to high risk of stroke caused by a blood clot, how are doctors to balance the risk of surgical bleeding...