Effect of healthcare reform on treating cardiovascular disease patients

Ninth annual conference to discuss health care reform and feature seminars on breakthrough non-surgical techniques for valve repair and replacements as well as stem cell and gene therapies

WHAT: The Ninth Annual Controversies and Advances in Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease continuing medical education conference will feature several discussions and presentations on how healthcare reform could affect cardiovascular disease patients' diagnosis, treatment and outcome. The conference, led by doctors from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, also will highlight developments in non-surgical valve repair and replacement as well as leading-edge stem cell and gene therapy research.

U.K.-U.S. HEALTH SYSTEMS COMPARISON: At 10:45 a.m. PDT on Thursday, Oct. 1, doctors from Great Britain and the United States will outline how they deliver patient care within their health care system and how their system's rules affect patient treatment and outcome. Roger Boyle, CBE, Britain's Department of Health national director for heart disease, will discuss the processes involved in his country's single-payer healthcare system. Steve Nissen, M.D., chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, will discuss his experiences treating patients within the U.S. private insurance system.

HEALTHCARE REFORM: At 11:30 a.m., CNN's Larry King, host of "Larry King Live," will moderate a panel discussion on how healthcare reform could help or hinder medical advances in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Panel members include P.K Shah, M.D., director of cardiology and the Atherosclerosis Research Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute; John G. Harold, M.D., chairman of the American College of Cardiology Board of Governors; Martin Leon, M.D., associate director of the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy of Columbia University Medical Center. .

STEM CELL UPDATE: On Friday, Oct. 2 at 2:30 p.m., Eduardo Marb-n, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, and Great Britain's Sir Magdi Yacoub, M.D., who has performed more heart transplants than any other surgeon in the world, will share developments from their respective groundbreaking research into cardiac stem cell therapies. In June 2009, Marb-n and his team at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute completed the world's first procedure in which a patient's own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells that were then injected back into the patient's heart in an effort to repair and re-grow healthy muscle in a heart that had been injured by a heart attack. In April 2007, a British medical research team under the direction of Yacoub became the first to grow part of a human heart valve from stem cells.

WHERE: Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, Calif.