American College of Cardiology, March 29-31

The annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology was held from March 29 to 31 in Chicago and attracted more than 12,000 participants, including clinicians, academicians, allied health professionals, and others interested in cardiology. The conference highlighted recent advances in the treatment, management, and prevention of cardiovascular diseases, with presentations focusing on novel drugs and surgical approaches to improve the quality of care for patients with cardiovascular diseases.

In one study, Zhanlin Chen, a medical student at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues found that a daily heart rate per step measurement recorded on a wearable device is a better measure of heart health than either heart rate or step count alone.

The authors evaluated data from 6,947 U.S. adults, including Fitbit and electronic health record data, as part of the All of Us research program, which is a nationwide prospective study. The metric (dividing the average daily heart rate by the number of steps taken per day) integrated heart rate and step count and evaluated how much harder the heart needed to work to meet the physiological demand of exercise. The researchers found that their metric (daily heart rate per step) was a superior measure of cardiovascular disease health compared with either of the two components alone.

“Existing studies on step counts have already shown a strong association with heart disease, but step counts, at the end of the day, are a conscious effort on how much we move, and a proxy for heart function,” Chen said. “We can hopefully use this metric, based on data that we are already collecting from millions of wearables, to screen for individuals at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease.”

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In another study, Ibrahim Kamel, M.D., of St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues found that cannabis use is associated with a significantly higher risk for myocardial infarction and other cardiovascular events, particularly in relatively healthy individuals.

The authors conducted both a systematic review and a meta-analysis to evaluate the association between cannabis use and myocardial infarction risk, along with a multicenter retrospective study to assess long-term cardiovascular outcomes.

In a large cohort from the TriNetX health research network, the researchers confirmed that cannabis use increased the risk for myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, and other major cardiovascular events, even in individuals without traditional cardiovascular risk factors. These results suggest that cannabis use may be an underrecognized risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

“Clinicians should be aware of this risk, especially in patients presenting with chest pain or other cardiovascular symptoms,” Kamel said. “Our results emphasize the need for health care providers to discuss cannabis use as part of routine cardiovascular risk assessments.”

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