The American Heart Association has announced a new initiative to improve early diagnosis and treatment of aortic stenosis (AS), a common but underdiagnosed heart valve condition. The effort, supported by Kardigan, leverages the Association's existing Target: Aortic Stenosis program to connect patients with moderate AS to clinical trials, potentially speeding access to innovative therapies.
Aortic stenosis is characterized by the narrowing of the aortic valve opening, which restricts blood flow from the heart to the body. Untreated, it can lead to severe complications, including heart failure and death. The initiative aims to address the issue of late diagnosis by engaging at least 40 hospitals and their affiliated heart valve clinics to identify eligible participants for clinical trials.
"Aortic stenosis is a serious condition, yet too often, people go undiagnosed until the disease progresses," said Sreekanth Vemulapalli, M.D., the Association's volunteer project clinical leader and a member of the Target: Aortic Stenosis Scientific Advisory Group. Vemulapalli, also an associate professor of medicine at Duke University, emphasized that the initiative will help shape future care by supporting clinical research.
The initiative will provide professional education, quality improvement tools, and site-level support to help clinicians better identify and refer patients for trials. A health care provider climate survey will explore barriers to enrollment and inform solutions to increase participation in structural heart disease research.
"We're proud to support this American Heart Association initiative to help connect patients with moderate aortic stenosis to promising research opportunities," said Jay Edelberg, M.D., Ph.D., co-founder and chief medical officer at Kardigan. "Improving access to clinical trials will not only advance innovation, but also help more people receive the diagnosis and treatment they need sooner."
More than 2,200 people with moderate AS are already managed through the Association's quality improvement network. The Target: Aortic Stenosis program is also supported by Edwards Lifesciences. For more information, visit heart.org.
