ESC Congress 2023 to feature 30 late-breaking clinical trials

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will highlight 30 late-breaking studies during Hot Line sessions at its annual meeting Aug. 25-28, 2023, in Amsterdam. The complete list of sessions and studies being presented is below.

John McMurray, ESC Congress program committee chair, believes there are several key sessions attendees should be looking forward to as the show approaches. In the Hot Line 1 session, the STEP HFpEF trial will examine the effects of once-weekly semaglutide in people with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and obesity. “This is a treatment targeting a common and increasing comorbidity in this type of heart failure. Obesity is associated with much worse symptoms and functional capacity and a higher risk of hospitalization. We hope reducing obesity will help patients with HFpEF,” McMurray said in a statement. 

The NOAH-AFNET 6 trial, meanwhile, examines oral anticoagulation in patients with atrial high-rate episodes. “This trial attempts to answer the very important clinical question of whether we should use anticoagulant therapy in patients with brief episodes of atrial fibrillation (AFib). We know that sustained AFib leads to a high risk of stroke, which can be effectively and safely (with respect to bleeding) reduced by treatment with an anticoagulant – but is this also true for short episodes of AFib?” 

The first Hot Line session concludes with COP-AF. “AFib and myocardial injury are common complications of thoracic surgery and are associated with high risks of death, stroke and longer hospital stays. Inflammation may play a role in causing these complications and colchicine has anti-inflammatory activity recently shown to be of benefit in patients with coronary artery disease. This large trial has tested whether starting colchicine pre-operatively reduces the risk of these complications,” McMurray explained.

He also emphasized HEART-FID, which will be presented in Hot Line 2. “Iron deficiency is very common in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and intravenous iron seems to improve symptoms and exercise tolerance,”  McMurray said. “However, the AFFIRM-HF and IRONMAN trials have left some uncertainty about the effects of this therapy on hospitalization and mortality. HEART-FID is by far the largest trial to date using this treatment."

Hot Line 4 could be one of the highlights of the entire conference for many cardiologists, McMurray said. It includes a series of trials – ILUMIEN IV, OCTIVUS and OCTOBER, which compare optical coherence tomography (OCT)-guided, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)-guided and angiography-guided percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). “The session also will have a real-time updated network meta-analysis presented, hopefully again providing the definitive evidence to guide the optimal approach to PCI,” he said.

Hot Line Session 1

Aug. 25, 11:15 a.m.

• STEP HFpEF: once-weekly semaglutide in people with HFpEF and obesity. Speaker: Mikhail Kosiborod, St. Luke's Mid America Heart Institute - Kansas City, United States.

• NOAH-AFNET 6: Oral anticoagulation in patients with atrial high rate episodes. Speaker: Paulus Kirchhof (University Heart and Vascular Center Hamburg, Germany.

• COP-AF - Colchicine for the prevention of perioperative atrial fibrillation after major thoracic surgery. Speaker: David Conen, Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton, Canada.

Hot Line Session 2

Aug. 26, 8:30 a.m.

• Qiliqiangxin in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction - the QUEST study. Speaker: Xinli Li, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.

• BUDAPEST CRT Upgrade: Cardiac resynchronisation therapy upgrade in heart failure with right ventricular pacing - a multicentre, randomised, controlled trial. Speaker: Bela Merkely, Semmelweis University Heart and Vascular Center, Budapest, Hungary.

• HEART-FID: Ferric Carboxymaltose in Heart Failure with Iron Deficiency. Speaker: Robert Mentz, Duke University Medical Center - Durham, United States.

• Effects of FCM on recurrent HF hospitalizations: an individual participant data meta-analysis. Speaker: Piotr Ponikowski, Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw, Poland.

Hot Line Session 3

Aug. 26, 4:30 p.m.

• FIRE trial: Physiology-Guided Complete PCI in Older MI Patients. Speaker: Simone Biscaglia, University Hospital Santa Anna, Ferrara, Italy.

• ECLS-SHOCK - venoarterial membrane oxygenation in cardiogenic shock. Speaker: Holger Thiele, Heart Center Leipzig at University of Leipzig, Germany.

• STOPDAPT-3: An Aspirin-Free antithrombotic strategy for percutaneous coronary intervention. Speaker: Masahiro Natsuaki, Saga University, Saga, Japan.

Hot Line Session 4

Aug. 27, 8:30 a.m.

• ILUMIEN IV: OCT Versus Angiography. Speaker: Ziad Ali, DeMatteis - St Francis, United States 

• OCT-guided or angiography-guided PCI in complex bifurcation lesions. The OCTOBER trial. Speaker: Lene Nyhus Andreasen, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark.

• OCTIVUS: OCT- vs. IVUS-Guided PCI. Speaker: Duk-Woo Park, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea

• OCT vs. IVUS vs. angiography guidance: a real-time updated network meta-analysis. Speaker: Gregg Stone, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States.

Hot Line Session 5

Aug. 27, 11:15 a.m.

• ATTRibute-CM: acoramidis (AG10) in patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy. Speaker: Julian Gillmore, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.

• ARREST trial: Expedited transfer to a cardiac arrest center for OHCA. Speaker: Tiffany Patterson, Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Trust Hospitals, London.

• ADVENT: Pulsed Field Ablation vs. Thermal Ablation (RF/Cryo) for Paroxysmal AF. Vivek Reddy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States.