AHA awards Clinical Research Prize to New York cardiologist for leading landmark trials creating guidelines for heart patient care

CHICAGO, Nov. 17, 2014 – The American Heart Association awarded its Clinical Research Prize for 2014 to Judith S. Hochman, M.D., of NYU Langone Medical Center “for exceptional leadership of landmark clinical trials profoundly impacting formulation of national practice guidelines for the management of ischemic heart disease.”

Hochman received the $5,000 prize during opening ceremonies of the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014 at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center. Association President Elliott Antman, M.D., presented the annual award honoring excellence in clinical research.

Antman said Hochman “has been the driving force behind, and an extraordinarily effective leader of, multiple National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-sponsored trials examining critical and clinically relevant patient-management questions.” Among these trials is one whose findings now serve as the basis of national and international guidelines for managing patients with cardiogenic shock due to acute heart attack. These guidelines, Antman said, “direct day-to-day, real-world patient care.”

While answering questions of critical clinical importance, these trials also demonstrated the feasibility of organizing large clinical trials that address highly controversial patient management decisions, Antman said. Hochman has been a key player in many major clinical trials.

Hochman is director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. She also is senior associate dean for clinical sciences, the Harold Snyder Family Professor of Cardiology and co-director of the Clinical Translational Science Institute and associate director of the Leon Charney Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, at the New York medical school.

Antman lauded Hochman as “an exceptional clinical investigator who has been at the vanguard of some of the most important practice-guiding trials in the history of the care of patients with coronary artery disease.”