Parallax by Ankur Kalra

In the second part of Parallax’s review of 2021, Dr Sukh Nijjer, Interventional Cardiologist from Imperial College London, and Dr Ankur Kalra discuss key advances in the field of heart failure and cardiac surgery. SGLT2 inhibitors are proving to be the blockbuster drug of this decade: Sukh summarises and compares the learnings from DAPA-HF, Emperor-Reduced, and Emperor-Preserved. Next, Sukh highli...

In the last Parallax episode of the year, Dr Ankur Kalra welcomed back Dr Sukh Nijjer, Interventional Cardiologist from Imperial College London, to review the most impactful events and advances in cardiology from 2021. This year we had a number of studies that helped clarify our understanding of the world of antiplatelets: First, Ankur and Sukh discuss the take-home messages from HOST-EXAM, a Kore...

In this AHA 2021 episode of Parallax, Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest is Dr Amit Khera, Professor and Director of Preventive Cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas and Vice Chair of the Scientific Sessions. For this week’s show, Dr Khera selected three thought-provoking late-breaking trials that will inform or change clinical practice. Ankur and Amit discuss how the AVATAR trial will influenc...

In this TCT 2021 episode of Parallax, Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest is Prof Mamas Mamas, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (UHNM), Professor of Cardiology at Keele University and Senior Clinical Editor of TCTmd. Ankur invites Mamas to talk about the clinical relevance of some of the top studies presented at TCT 2021. Mamas summarises the studies, s...

Dr. Pandey, a recipient of multiple awards, thinks about himself as a person driven by curiosity rather than passion. He believes that his interest in solving problems helped him to navigate successes and failures as an early-career researcher. In celebration of Diwali, Dr. Ankur Kalra sat down with Dr. Ambarish Pandey, Assistant Professor at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, to...

This week’s Parallax in collaboration with the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) explores the many ways organisations can embrace the needs of a diverse community and create a culture that can react to the realities of patientcare. Host Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest is Dr Nancy M. Albert, Immediate Past President of HFSA and Associate Chief Nursing Officer of the Office of Research and Innovation a...

In the second ESC 2021 episode of Parallax, Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest is Dr. Mirvat Alasnag, interventional Cardiologist and Director of Catheterization Laboratory at the King Fahad Armed Forces Hospital (KFAFH) in Saudi Arabia. Dr Alasnag was a programme committee member at this year’s ESC and regional PI of one of the late-breaking trials presented. Ankur invites Mirvat to review the interventional...

In this week’s episode Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest is Dr. Purvi Parwani, Director of Women’s Cardiovascular Disease Clinic and Assistant Professor at Loma Linda University Medical Center. In this special ESC 2021 edition of Parallax, Ankur asks Purvi to review the highlights of the congress. Purvi summarises the design and findings of the trials and their importance in the treatment of patients. Ankur...

“It was this sense of finally belonging somewhere that sparked my journey to self-love.” -Nasrien E. Ibrahim, Sparkplug Being an advanced heart failure and transplant specialist compelled Dr. Ibrahim to look at life from a different perspective: “With transplants you are seeing the extremes of life and death.” Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest is Dr Nasrien Ezzeldin Ibrahim, Director of Heart Failure Clinica...

How can we change the language of medicine to set up patients for success? This was one of the questions of Dr Lala when she met a young father with acute heart failure. After talking with him, she replaced the word failure with function. This seemingly small change created a real difference for the patient. How can we create real understanding through words? How can scientific publishing aid dive...

Dr. Bansilal was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai when he decided to seek out an alternative pathway to make an impact on patients’ lives. Dr. Ankur Kalra’s guest this week is Dr. Sameer Bansilal, Executive Director of U.S Medical Affairs of Cardiovascular and Renal at Bayer Pharmaceutical. After years with the TIMI Study Group, Sameer made the deci...

Early in his career, Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt was considering becoming a basic science researcher. After an exchange with one of his mentors about doing science for the science’s sake, he had a self-realisation: He wanted his work to have a direct impact on patient care. In the 50th episode of Parallax, Dr. Ankur Kalra’s guest is Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt leading physician, researcher, lecturer, and educator...

The American College of Cardiology surveyed cardiologists across the globe to have a more detailed understanding on the impact of hostility, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace. Of almost 6000 cardiologists who took part in the survey 44% reported hostile work environment. Dr Ankur Kalra’s guest this week is Dr Garima Sharma, Director of CardioObstetrics and Assistant Professor of Medi...

"A failure to finish is a failure to start" In this week's latest podcast episode, host, Ankur Kalra, MD, meets guest Prof Madhav Swaminathan (Duke University Health System, NC, US) to discuss how he has orchestrated a major humanitarian effort, in association with Duke University Health and The American Society of Echocardiography, to supply ventilation equipment and PPE to hospitals and NGOs dur...

Over the past two years, Parallax listeners have gotten to know Dr Ankur Kalra through his conversations with our guests. In this episode, we turned the tables and invited CardioNerds co-founder Dr Amit Goyal to reintroduce Dr Ankur Kalra interventional cardiologist, researcher, writer, and the host of this podcast. In this candid and spiritual conversation Amit and Ankur take a journey through fo...

According to Dr Eric Adler, at the core of all impactful research is a powerful narrative that makes us reflect on the human condition. In 2006, when the ground-breaking discovery was made that specialized cells can be turned into stem cells, Dr Eric Adler was thinking about how he could create a synergy between his passion for clinical work and his determination to ask compelling questions in res...

Two and a half weeks before her urgent orthotopic transplantation, Alin led the life of a busy emergency medicine resident. The warning signs of her dilated cardiomyopathy were drowned out by the demands of a 24-hour shift at her critical care unit. She recalls being confused while she was transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and was signed up for the organ transplant list...

Dr Heval Kelli will never forget when during his third year as a medical student, a man kept coming to the clinic complaining about being hungry. The team was checking for underlying health issues, when one of Dr Kelli’s attendings took his history and realised that this patient was not able to get access to food. Dr Kelli came away from this episode with a lesson that still shapes him as a doctor...

Dr Sodhi remembers the first time she stepped into a Cath lab and found her passion. Years later she was preparing to do a complex TAVR procedure with her colleagues when suddenly they all recognised the significance of four women coming together in the lab. The photo of the four of them was shared widely on social media. For Dr Sodhi it became a symbol of what great mentorship can achieve, and fo...

In one of her many posts on Instagram, we can see Dr Hafiza Khan holding a table summarising her reactogenicity after her second COVID shot. In the frame next to her is her son listing his own reactions. Ankur’s guest is Dr Hafiza Khan, Cardiac Electrophysiologist at Baylor Scott & White Arrhythmia Management in Dallas. One of only 9 women in her field in Texas, she started to think about her lega...

Mallory was not prepared when she underwent her first heart surgery in seventh grade: She was hoping to regain her stamina, instead she experienced what she describes as a loss of self. Mallory was born with a rare heart disease called a Ebstein’s anomaly. In this powerful episode, Mallory Abbott recounts how she learnt to draw strength from her condition: She talks candidly about the realities of...

Dr Mehra does not frame his experiences as failures or successes; he looks at all events with one question in mind: What can I learn from this? In this week’s episode Ankur’s guest is Dr Mandeep R Mehra, Medical Director of Brigham Heart and Vascular Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr Mehra’s professional journey started in the Sevagaram Ashram in India where medicine a...

In the first Parallax episode of 2021, Ankur welcomed back Sukh Nijjer from Imperial College London to review the most impactful events and advances in cardiology from 2020. In the first part of the episode, Ankur and Sukh focus on the mechanism of the coronavirus and its effects on the heart including clotting abnormality and troponin elevation. They discuss their clinical experiences and observa...

In the late 1980s, shortly after he left the NIH, Dr Martin B Leon founded the non-profit organisation, Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF). At the beginning, CRF had almost no funding or people, but it had a concept of bringing together an academic community to follow the device development cycle from inception to inclusion. Today, CFR is a global entity, and its events are attended by hundr...

This week Parallax welcomed its first non-physician/researcher guest: health advocate Lindsay Davis. Lindsay, ballerina with ambitions to study at Julliard, was experiencing the symptoms of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) from her early teens, but she had not been diagnosed until she was 17. Years later, after her agents asked her to hide her heart condition when on film sets, she felt compelled...