Laurence Sperling, MD, FACC, FACP, FAHA: Optimizing Cardiovascular Care

Last week, Laurence S. Sperling, MD, FACC, FACP, FAHA, founder and director of Preventive Cardiology, co-director of the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program and professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, presented updates on the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Expert Consensus Decision Pathway for Heart Failure.

The new updates were presented at The Metabolic Institute of America’s (TMIOA) 2021 Heart in Diabetes sessions in New York, NY.

In his presentation, Sperling touched on several advances involving medications that aided in cardiovascular risk prevention and diabetes management.

“This is a really exciting time in the history of medicine right now because we not only can lower blood glucose with one of the newer agents that we have available, but the data is charging ahead that we have amazing opportunities to prevent cardiovascular disease for small kidney progression and patients with diabetes,” Sterling said.

Some of the new data focused on sodium-glucose constransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors and GLP1 receptor agonists, the former of which have been used to lower blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes when coupled with appropriate diet and exercise.

“The data is phenomenal, because now for the first time we see agents in this class that can be used for people living with heart failure, and preserved ejection fraction. and we do see benefits in terms of prevention of renal disease progression, those living with heart failure and systolic dysfunction,” Sperling said. “These benefits appear to go beyond, at least in the heart failure realm, those living with diabetes. So ultimately, the story may play out that the SGLT2 inhibitors very much become a drug class that cardiovascular specialists should not only be familiar with but using on a fairly routine basis.”

Sperling also touched on the importance of cardiovascular risk reduction, which he noted was influenced by what he referred to as “the ABCs of cardiovascular disease prevention”. This included antiplatelet therapy, blood pressure control, cholesterol management, diabetes medications and diet nutrition, and exercise and education.

Despite referencing “exciting” new data and new frontiers in cardiovascular research being discussed at the conference, he added that clinicians often fall short of guidelines that they follow, and that an increased focus on implementation of these strategies was needed.

He added that clinicians and patients could utilize health system approaches better through tele-health and telemedicine, as well as building in advance practice providers and PharmD programs.

“Cardiovascular specialists, kidney specialists, diabetes specialists, primary care doctors; we all need to get in the game,” Sperling said. “We need to work better together, we need to understand that this is really exciting evolution of care, (and) a great opportunity. We are literally seeing the future in front of our eyes today, but we need to get on board.”

To hear more about the contemporary role of medications in heart failure and diabetes from Dr. Sperling, watch the video interview above.