October 31, 2012

I briefly call your attention to two significant items.

First, the Houston Chronicle has launched a new monthly Sunday section, Health Zone, and devoted the October 28th inaugural cover story to our efforts to prevent sudden cardiac death in young people.

As you may know, our Center for Coronary Artery Anomalies, under the direction of myself and Dr. Paolo Angelini, is conducting an FDA-approved study of the causes of sudden cardiac death, which includes the screening of 10,000 Houston-area middle school students. We are grateful for the support of Rich and Nancy Kinder and the Kinder Foundation for their generous support of the Kinder Outreach Program. We are also grateful to the Chronicle for helping to focus the public eye on this serious problem that so often tragically strikes young athletes.

A second item getting deserved public attention this week is the work done by Dr. Edward T. H. Yeh and a team of scientists from The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and THI in discovering a key link between a widely used chemo-therapy drug that often leads to heart failure in cancer patients.

Dr. Edward T. H. Yeh

Dr. Yeh’s team published a paper in the science journal Nature Medicine that describes the molecular mechanism by which the drug, doxorubicin, damages the heart. It is an important key to hopefully preventing this deadly complication for cancer patients and may lead to development of new, safer drugs.

You can read more about this important work here.

With my respect and gratitude,

James T. Willerson, MD
President and Medical Director

Contact Dr. Willerson.