Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/1079661
12 t m c » p u l s e | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 Q | How did you decide to focus your website on the patient perspective? A | When we were doing Vitals, my partner— who is a business guy—said we were going to get the patient perspective. I said: 'The patients don't understand; we need the doctors' perspec- tive.' I allowed my partner to convince me I was wrong and it turns out the patient perspective, in many ways, was more valuable than the doctors' perspective and that's the way we ended up doing it. At its peak, Vitals.com was getting about 15 mil- lion visitors a month. The value was the patient perspective. We were early to the online reviews. Q | Can you describe your work with gene therapy and heart disease? A | I was a junior faculty member at Cornell [New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center] and we were doing this work with gene therapy and having the heart grow its own bypasses. We had no business thinking about injecting a virus into the human heart or doing cardiac gene therapy. No one had ever done it before. But we said: 'Why not?' We were the first ones ever to treat someone with gene therapy for heart disease. I was 38 at the time. It's something I talk to my residents and students and junior faculty about. Believe in what you're doing; have a little bit of temerity to go beyond where you should be and persevere to do it. If you feel like you're doing the right thing and you've done your homework, don't be shy about persevering on it. We are now ready to start a new trial here in the Texas Medical Center—same work, taking it to the next level 20 years later. Q | What's the advantage to the body growing its own bypasses? A | For some patients who have advanced dis- ease, typically because they are diabetics, there is nothing we can offer them [to restore blood flow to the heart]. They are literally incapacitated with angina or chest pain. And when we do bypass or angioplasty, often we can't revascularize or get good blood flow to the whole heart. We know statistically that patients who don't get adequate blood flow to the entire heart won't do as well. This gene therapy can be used as an adjunct to standard therapies like bypass or angioplasties. About two years ago, I was at a Texas Heart Institute transplant review board and these patients had such incapacitating angina that they were candidates for heart transplants. They were going to take this poor person's heart out with perfectly good function. This is an alternative. © 2019 Belmont Village, L.P. | ALF 106016, 030197 belmontvillage.com e Cmunity Built f Li. ® HUNTERS CREEK | 713-781-1505 WEST UNIVERSITY | 713-592-9200 Distinctive Residential Settings | Chef-Prepared Dining and Bistro | Pool Premier Health and Wellness Programs | Award-Winning Memory Care Professionally Supervised Therapy and Rehabilitation Services "We haven missed •r h•• car sin• we got h‚e!" - Voices of Belmont Village Aging together is a gift. Couples who call Belmont Village home celebrate every day in a luxurious setting alive with engaging activities, spirited friendships and award-winning wellness programs. Our licensure ensures that couples can continue to live together, even with differing care needs. Together. Like always. HC_WU_TMCPulse_CouplesAlt_GPTW_2_2019.indd 1 1/3/19 2:16 PM I think we are at an inflec- tion point on how we take care of each other and how we take care of our patients. Between artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, I think we are going to live decades longer. I think we are going to live healthier. I think we're going to look back on how we take care of patients in 10 years and say: 'What were we thinking?'