His patients were made better by being in his presence. This powerful description of Kanu Chatterjee, MBBS, FACC, inspired Mariell Jessup, MD, FACC, to recall that not long ago a physician treating a patient with heart failure (HF) had little more than compassion to offer. Today in her 2017 Kanu and Docey Chatterjee Lecture, Jessup will reflect on the history of treating HF and what is needed to take bold steps to move the management of HF forward.

“I am deeply honored to deliver a lecture that recognizes the contributions of Kanu and Docey Chatterjee, celebrating their lives and their dedication to our field,” says Jessup, chief scientific officer at Foundation Leducq, and a well-known leader and clinician in HF.

Jessup will also discuss the challenges posed by the volume and complexity of new information that physicians must process to understand HF and determine the best treatment for a specific patient. Acknowledging that the explosion of information – such as the genetic and metabolic basis of HF and the descriptive basic science – can be overwhelming for busy clinicians to embrace or employ, Jessup will provide attendees with a look at some of the strategies or pathways through which to understand it and be involved.

" I am deeply honored to deliver a lecture that recognizes the contributions of Kanu and Docey Chatterjee, celebrating their lives and their dedication to our field." — Mariell Jessup, MD, FACC

Personalized medicine in the setting of HF and what this will require is another area that Jessup will address during her lecture. She notes that personalizing treatment will require a richer and more descriptive definition of HF and its phenotypes – and most likely more phenotypes or subsets of the current two broad phenotypes – that is agreed to across the basic science, translational medicine and clinical domains. This can serve as a foundation for research for treatments that are targeted to specific phenotypes, in an approach similar to the more targeted treatments occurring in oncology.

The 2017 Kanu and Docey Chatterjee Lecture will take place Friday, March 17, from 12:15 – 1:45 p.m. in Ballroom C.

Keywords: ACC Publications, ACC Scientific Session Newspaper, ACC Annual Scientific Session, Anniversaries and Special Events, Blast Injuries, Empathy, Explosions, Heart Failure, Humans, Phenotype, Physicians, Translational Medical Research