Continued and expanded support for the Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN) and Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) is essential as both design, conduct, and analyze multiple, collaborative clinical trials that evaluate surgical interventions, and related management approaches for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

To date both networks have reported on and developed a portfolio of studies which need continued... more »

The continued development of new technologies requires cardiothoracic surgeons to maintain a strong level of research to ensure the highest quality of patient care and surgical outcomes are received across the world. The level of support for CT surgery within the NIH has continued to drop over the last decade. This is a substantial problem for the specialty as the limited funding available creates difficulty in the continued... more »

There is a vital need for evidence-based clinical evaluation tools to assess operative risk and post-operative recovery in the elderly, including biomarkers of physiologic age and a simple/reliable clinical evaluation scheme to determine frailty as a risk factor for poor surgical outcomes.

There is a need to optimize long-term cognitive and functional outcomes in the aging population during and after cardiothorasic surgery, including the development of simple, objective tools to enable risk stratification for vulnerability to neurocognitive deficit. First, cardiothoracic surgical trials and clinical studies should be more "age-representative" and reflect the increasing proportion of the aging population.... more »

Multiple randomized controlled trials have been performed to evaluate the use of prophylactic PLT transfusions in non-bleeding, thrombocytopenic hematology-oncology patients. However no high-quality data exist to guide PLT transfusions in actively bleeding patients inclduing pediatric and adult medical and surgical patients. After hematology-oncology patients, cardiac surgery patients are the next largest group of PLT... more »

What is the contribution of the inflammatory response to postoperative recovery following pediatric cardiac operations and what strategies can improve outcomes?

Obesity is a pervasive disease. It contributes to serious diseases such as heart, all the way down to cancer. In the past five decades it has been confirmed that the sugar from rich carbohydrate (CHO) foods increases the production of insulin which in turn converts the excess caloric intake into fat. So far neither dieting with highly processed foods rich in CHO’s, nor radical surgery have made a dent in this most... more »

Controversies exist regarding the treatment of the thoracic aorta in those with bicuspid aortic valve (BAV), in particular: 1) conflicting views regarding criteria for elective surgery, particularly aneurysm size 2) extent of thoracic aortic aneurysm repair.

Does bariatric surgery reduce the risk of MI, stroke, heart failure, and premature death in moderately obese adults?

Does the type of surgery matter?

In order to increase the success of robotic mitral valve repair, we need to stimulate a fusion of multi-modal functional imaging with 3-D valve models that can accurately predict valve shape and closure throughout the cardiac cycle, then develop surgical “blueprints” that overlay incision and suture maps on the surgeon’s console to guide perioperative robotic repair.