UR Nursing Researchers Recognized at American Heart Association Scientific Sessions
By Gianluca D'Elia
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Faculty and students from the University of Rochester School of Nursing received national recognition for their research and presented at the American Heart Association’s (AHA) 2023 Scientific Sessions.
Professor of Nursing Mary Carey, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN, and Michele Pelter, PhD, RN, FAHA, an associate professor of physiological nursing at University of California, San Francisco, received the Research Article of the Year Award.
The award-winning article, "An annotated ventricular tachycardia (VT) alarm database: Toward a uniform standard for optimizing automated VT identification in hospitalized patients," was published in the Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology earlier this year.
VT is a life-threatening abnormal heart rhythm, and computer accuracy of identifying VT is less than 10 percent, jeopardizing patient safety and contributing to alarm fatigue among health care providers. A team of researchers collaborated across the University of Rochester, UCSF, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to create a database of over 22,000 ventricular tachycardia alarms from 500,000 hour of ECG monitoring to train computer algorithms to better recognize and predict fatal VT arrhythmias among hospitalized patients.
The study found that creating high-quality, well-annotated datasets for algorithm development and testing can ultimately improve patient outcomes and reduce alarm burden.
PhD candidate Sunita Pokhrel Bhattarai, MS, RN, won the AHA Council on Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing's Early Career Research Travel Grant. The award recognizes promising and outstanding investigators in the early stages of their careers and provides travel assistance to participate in AHA scientific meetings.
In September, she successfully defended her dissertation proposal, “Estimating Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction from the 12-Lead Electrocardiogram in Acute Heart Failure Patients: A Retrospective Study.”
Faculty, students and their collaborators also presented the following posters:
- Sunita Pokhrel Bhattarai: "Estimating Ejection Fraction From the 12 Lead ECG in Acute Heart Failure"
- Mary Carey and Priya Prasad, PhD, MPH (UCSF Nursing): "Comparison of the Frequency and Time to True VT Among Patients in the Cardiac, Medical/Surgical and Neurologic ICU"
- Assistant Professor Dillon Dzikowicz, PhD, RN, PCCN: "Topic Models Using Notes from Electronic Medical Records Can Classify Non ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction Patients Based on the Presence of an Occluded Culprit Artery"
- Assistant Professor Sukardi Suba, PhD, RN: "Time to Coronary Angiography in Patients With NSTE-ACS is Longer in Women as Compared to Men"
Save the Date: Sukardi Suba will be the special guest at the next School of Nursing Lunch & Learn on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The event will take place in person at noon in the School of Medicine & Dentistry Class of ’62 Auditorium.
