President’s Report

Dear SCVP Member,

2023 has now come to an end and our society was abuzz with activity throughout the year, all with our primary mission in mind – to advance the study of cardiovascular disorders. In March, we had a very successful annual meeting in New Orleans where we celebrated Dr. John Veinot with a Lifetime Achievement Award had very fruitful conversations on the future of our Society.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic made very clear the importance of our discipline in informing not only medical practice but government policy as well. Limitations of decades-old diagnostic criteria for myocarditis were laid bare and we committed to revisiting and refining how we approach this diagnosis. As such, the last year has largely been spent in preparation for our upcoming annual meeting in Baltimore where draft consensus criteria will be presented. This work, a joint initiative between our society and the Association for European Cardiovascular Pathology, will surely advance the science and be a highlight of 2024.

 

During the last year, we had two of our members selected as inaugural members of the Association of Pathology Chairs Academy of Distinguished Pathology Educators: Peter Anderson, DVM, PhD and L. Maximilian Buja, MD. This is a fantastic recognition and a testament to the fact that cardiovascular pathologists often play a critical and recognized role in education.

 

On the educational front, we saw publication of two consensus documents. The first, led by Karen Kelly, MD, focused on recommendations for cardiac examination in cases of sudden death in the young and the second, led by Vidhya Nair, MD and Greg Fishbein MD, provided guidelines for processing interpretation and reporting of temporal artery biopsy specimens. This brings our total consensus documents produced by our Society to an impressive SEVEN, all published in Cardiovascular Pathology. Speaking of our journal, our impact factor stands strong at 3.7 – which is remarkable for a subspeciality pathology journal.

 

We also continue to have monthly journal clubs, led by Peter Wang, MD, PhD, that have been incredibly well attended and Melanie Bois, MD continues to ensure our Society’s social media presence on X (formerly, Twitter).

 

We also saw updates to our website, led by our past-president, Marc Halushka, MD, PhD and a refresh of our logo for a new era. Swag exhibiting this new logo will be available at our upcoming meeting. Several other initiatives, on both the clinical and educational fronts, continue to move forward and I invite you all to our upcoming annual meeting this March in Baltimore to learn more. At that time, we will also be celebrating Dr. E. Rene Rodriguez, MD for his life’s work.

 

Here’s to an exciting and prosperous start to the new year!

 

 

 

 

Joe Maleszewski, MD

President, Society for Cardiovascular Pathology