Division of Cardiovascular Diseases Strategic Plan

Goals in Cardiovascular Clinical Problems or Disease States

Table of Contents

1. Congenital and Valvular Disease
   1. Explain the developmental and genetic basis of congenital heart disease.
   2. Improve evidence-based care and treatment of children with congenital and acquired pediatric heart disease.
   3. Improve evidence-based care and treatment of adults with congenital heart disease.
   4. Increase our understanding of the initiation and progression of valvular heart disease toward improving its diagnosis and therapy.
2. Hypertension, Atherothrombosis, and Vascular Disease
   1. Develop and evaluate preventive and therapeutic strategies for cardiovascular risk factors for acquired heart disease beginning in childhood.
   2. Develop and validate new strategies to prevent target organ damage in hypertension.
   3. Prevent initiation and progression of atherosclerosis/atherothrombosis.
   4. Improve management of acute and chronic coronary syndromes.
   5. Improve prevention and treatment strategies for aortic aneurysms to prevent their progression, rupture, and dissection.
   6. Improve diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for lower extremity peripheral arterial disease.
   7. Develop new preventive and therapeutic approaches for cerebrovascular disease.
   8. Advance understanding of the fundamental mechanisms regulating the function of the lymphatic vasculature in relation to cardiovascular diseases.
   9. Improve diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of venous thromboembolism.
3. Cardiac Arrhythmias
   1. Develop means to predict and prevent sudden cardiac arrest and subsequent death.
   2. Halt the epidemic of atrial fibrillation and its associated morbidity.
   3. Improve the dismal (5-10 percent) and stagnant success rate of out-of-hospital cardiac and life-threatening trauma resuscitation.
4. Heart Failure, Cardiac Arrest, Recovery and Replacement Therapies
   1. Reduce the morbidity and mortality of ischemic and non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy by developing new treatments through improved understanding of pathophysiology.
   2. Reduce the morbidity and mortality of hypertensive heart failure.
   3. Establish strategies to prevent or reverse the phenotypic expression of genetically identifiable myocardial and rhythm disorders.
   4. Expand the application of mechanical cardiac support devices to improve clinical outcomes in patients with heart failure.
   5. Develop effective therapies for protecting the heart from ischemia and reperfusion injury.
   6. Improve outcome for cardiac transplant patients and make transplantation available to a larger number of heart failure patients

Return to Goals of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases Strategic Plan.

September 2008