American College of Cardiology (ACC24) Show Preview: Advancing Cardiovascular Care for All

Here is a look at the education and special events planned for the ACC24 73rd Annual Scientific Session & Expo, April 6-8 in Atlanta

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has announced key educational and programming highlights for its ACC 73rd Annual Scientific Session & Expo, ACC.24, which will be held April 6-8, 2024, at Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center. This year’s theme, “Advancing Cardiovascular Care for All,” brings the latest practice-changing breakthroughs and late-breaking clinical trials.

The Scientific Session and Expo coincides with ACC’s 75^th anniversary, and will feature special events to mark the milestone, including its first-ever Giving Day on April 6, and an Anniversary Reception following Convocation on April 8.

“This is an incredibly exciting year for the American College of Cardiology. It's the 75th anniversary since the ACC was founded,” said Douglas Drachman, MD, FACC, ACC24 Chair, during a recent press briefing. “During the ACC meeting on April 6, it's going to be the first-ever ACC Giving Day. We hope that the anniversary contributions will help to support the college's mission and mission-focused work that empowers future leaders in the next generation of cardiovascular innovators through scholarship, mentorship and leadership development programs.

“We aim to improve global care outcomes through the distribution of educational materials to clinicians in underserved communities worldwide,” Drachman continued. “And through the support of quality improvement programs that can help to save lives we hope throughout our communities and throughout the world. In addition, the ACC aims to advance health equity through education, advocacy and science. So, all contributions on this Giving Day will really go much further beyond and hopefully help to improve cardiovascular health for the world.”

ACC24 by the Numbers

This year’s educational lineup features 1,520 faculty, 197 of which are International; 17 traditional classrooms, including more than 200 structured sessions; 7 guideline-specific sessions; 11 Learning Pathways; and 1 ACC Anywhere event. According to Drachman, the number of submissions for scientific posters and sessions was the highest since 2004. “This is just an absolute blockbuster of the year. There were 1,100 more abstracts submitted this year than last year, and 2,300 more than at ACC22,” he shared. “And to my understanding, it's the most we've seen since ACC04 or perhaps even before.”

In total, more than 7,600 posters were submitted, and of those, more than 4,600 were accepted. Top countries by submission include China, Japan, Brazil, India and Mexico. For the Young Investigator Awards, 103 applications were submitted and 15 were accepted. A new feature this year is the Silent Poster Theater, where attendees will be able to listen to poster presentations by downloading the ACC24 app and listening along as they check out the posters, providing great engagement alongside the science presented.

Heart2Heart Stage

The Heart2Heart stage is located in the lounge and learn areas, as it has been over the past many years of the ACC annual meeting, and features 15 short informal sessions featuring a mix of clinical and non-clinical topics. Of the many can’t miss topics include:

Charting a New Frontier: Next Steps in Efforts to Create a New CV Board, April 6, 10:45-11:15 am ET;
ACC at 75: Honoring the Past, Envisioning Tomorrow, April 6, 2:45-3:15 pm; and
Giving from the Heart: How Philanthropy Accelerates the ACC Mission, April 8, 11:30-noon ET.

ACC24 Intensive: The Business of Cardiology

The ACC24 annual meeting hosts Intensive Sessions that are focused on new and growing areas in cardiovascular practice, or how to expand understanding in a specific area of concentration. “Historically, we’ve done 275 minutes sessions, but this year, we thought that we would double down on this and actually we’re going to have twice as much intensive,” said Drachman. “This year it will be four sessions long, and the focus is going to be the business of cardiology, which we think is just so incredibly important to all cardiovascular clinicians and practitioners.”

This year features 18 presentations led by business and cardiology experts, including sessions that address the basics of business, optimizing the care team, the sustainability of our systems in which we practice medicine, and hot topics in the business of cardiology.

The four-part series, led by Alison Bailey, MD, FACC, and Ty Gluckman, MD, FACC, includes:

Business Basics for Everyone, featuring the James T. Dove Keynote by Karen E. Joynt Maddox, MD, FACC;
Optimizing the Care Team;
Sustainability of the System; and
Hot Topics in Business of Cardiology, featuring the Louis F. Bishop Keynote by Gerald Blackwell, MD, MBA, FAAC

2024 Keynote Presentations

“We know what the growing complexity of coordinating care, multifaceted care and the need to really get the science up to the forefront. The focus is now included the emphasis on the entire cardiovascular team,” stated Kimberly Guibone, DNP, FACC, ACC24 CV Team Lead, during the press conference. “The role of CV Team Lead completes our triad ensuring complementary perspectives throughout the entirety of the conference.”

The ACC24 keynotes include:

James T. Dove: Why Quality Increasingly Matters, presented by Karen E. Joynt Maddox, MD, FACC, April 6, noon-1:15 pm ET;
Dan G. McNamera: From Civil Rights to Patient Equity—A legacy of Strength, presented by Josephine B. Isabel-Jones, MD, April 6, noon-1:15 pm;
Louis F. Bishop: The Future of Cardiology: Value-based Care, Private Equity and Practice Landscape, presented by Gerald Blackwell, MD, MBA, FACC, April 7, 9:45-11 am ET;
Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist, presented by Emily Shou Wai Lau, MD, FACC, April 7, 12:15-1:30 pm ET; and
Eugene Braunwald: Time for a Revamp of the Clinical Evidence System, presented by Robert M. Califf, MD, MACC, April 8, 12:45-2 pm

CV Team

The goal of the ACC24 CV team has been to allow, in every session, to have some pearls of knowledge or expertise that can immediately be taken back to the practice and implemented. There are 11 learning pathways during this year's meeting. The CV sessions include:

April Adventure

Last year’s conference started with a March Matchup, and this year’s will kick off with an April Adventure. Expert debates address challenging questions in the care of patients with valve disease, including a new segment on pulmonic valve disease. Highlights include:

Vexing Valves (Session 501)
Extreme Makeover, Diet Edition - Debating Controversies in Cardiovascular Health (Session 502)
Game of Shones (Session 503)
Top Intervention Trials of 2023 (Session 504)
The Great ECG Challenge (Session 505)
Under Pressure, Debating Hemodynamics With the Experts (Session 506)
Critical Care Cardiology Family Feud (Session 507)
Difficult Decisions in CTEPH – Balloon or the Scalpel? (Session 508)
Battle of the Imagers - Jeopardy Edition! (Session 509)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in Eradicating Vascular Medicine Disparities? (Session 510)
To Treat or Not to Treat Anatomy and Ischemia? (Session 511)

Practice-Change Late-breakers

ACC24 will offer practice-changing science that will be offered throughout the meeting, including late breaking-clinical trials as well as featured clinical research. A few of these highlights include:

RELIEVE-HF—the trial looks at reducing congestion in the lungs for heart failure with an inter-atrial shunt.
EMPACT-MI—takes a look at empagliflozin applied to MIs instead of heart failure.
AEGIS-II, presented April 6 beginning at 9:30 am—A phase 3 trial on CSL112.
BE ACTIVE—about physical activity and how physical activity is enhanced in patients looking at financial incentivization as well as gamification, and what that does for physical activity with regards to patients who have MI and a high risk for cardiovascular disease.
SHASTA-2—looks at a new medicine plozasiran on the treatment of hypertriglyceridemia
SMART Trial—a head-to-head trial of the self-expanding vs. a balloon-expanding TAVR
DanGer Shock—brings equipoise to how cardiogenic shock is treated in general, looking at the use of a transvalvular mico-axial flow pump in patients who have infarct or heart attack related shock
TACTic Trial—how technology assists a non-prescription use of rosuvastatin
ORBITA-COSMIC—a structural trail looking at the treatment of angina in patients, using a coronary sinus reduction device to increase the amount of flow to the heart muscle
Preventive PCI or Medical Therapy Alone for Atherosclerotic Coronary Vulnerable Plaques—addresses issues around vulnerable plaque that isn’t obstructive in flow, but plagues doctors with regards of what to do with it.

Clinical and Investigative Horizons

The Clinical and Investigative Horizons is a new type of late-breaker session that was added for ACC23 and is back by popular demand. “This session focuses on science that is really food for thought; very enticing for those of us who are in the field, thinking about different ways that we do research and different types of research in general. There will be five in this session,” said Katie Berlacher, MD, FACC, ACC24 Vice Chair, during the recent ACC24 press conference. This session will be held April 7, 4:30-5:30 pm ET.

You can register for ACC24 here.

For more information: www.acc.org