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Congratulations to ASNC's 2016 Awardees

Message from Brian G. Abbott, MD, MASNC, ASNC President: 
Dear Colleagues,  
ASNC is privileged to work with a visionary membership dedicated to the Society's mission of improving cardiovascular outcomes through image-guided patient management. At ASNC2016, the Society honored members and friends for their leadership, service and commitment to excellence. Please join me in congratulating each of the following awardees and their teams! 

Thank You to the ASNC 2016 Service Awardees   

Each year, ASNC honors two members whose work and dedication to the Nuclear Cardiology specialty and to ASNC have helped to ensure quality and safety in the field. This year, it was ASNC's privilege to present Service Awards to two individuals:  
 
Sandra L. Katanick, RN, RVT, FSVU, CAE, served as the chief executive officer of the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC) for nearly 25 years and has long been beloved as the field's “Queen of Quality.” She has been the driving force behind the extraordinary growth of the IAC, which now has eight divisions, including IAC Nuclear/PET, and has evaluated more than 15,000 sites to assess the quality of patient care each one achieves. “Sandy's dedication, infectious enthusiasm and kind-hearted spirit have certainly been beloved by everyone she has interacted with in the past 25 years, and we thank her for dedicating her life's work to the mission of improving health care through accreditation,” said ASNC President-Elect Raymond Russell, MD, PhD, when he presented Ms. Katanick with a 2016 ASNC Service Award.  



Robert J. Gropler, MD, MASNC, is professor of Radiology, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the Washington University School of Medicine; senior vice-chair and division director of Radiological Sciences and chief of the Cardiovascular Imaging Laboratory at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. Dr. Gropler has been instrumental in the development and validation of quantitative tools for measuring myocardial oxygen, glucose and fatty acid metabolism with PET radiotracers. He served as president of the Certification Board of Nuclear Cardiology (CBNC) from 2006 to 2012. Dr. Gropler's remarkable consensus-building skills helped ensure that the CBNC merger with Inteleos was achieved—“a crucial achievement for the CNBC to continue evolving,” said ASNC President-Elect Raymond Russell, MD, PhD, at ASNC2106. “We also thank him for his participation in our Society's committees for Item Development, Forms Review and Standard Setting as well as various task forces.” 


Special Tribute to the 2016 Masters of ASNC (MASNC)   

At ASNC2016, the Society had the honor of recognizing the new group of Masters of ASNC (MASNC), a designation reserved for individuals who have distinguished themselves as senior leaders of the Nuclear Cardiology specialty and its society, ASNC. When you see the following new Masters of ASNC, please join us in thanking these individuals for their commitment and dedication to the field and ASNC:
Brian G. Abbott, MD 
Dennis A. Calnon, MD 
Vasken Dilsizian, MD
Raymond J. Gibbons, MD
Robert J. Gropler, MD
April Mann, MBA, CNMT, RT(N), NCT

Announcing ASNC's 2016 Choosing Wisely® Challenge Winners  




ASNC congratulates the winners of the first Nuclear Cardiology Choosing Wisely Challenge. From left: ASNC President-Elect Raymond Russell, MD, PhD, Felix Krainski, MD, David E. Winchester, MD, MS, Erica Cohen, DO, MPH, and John Held, APR, of the ABIM Foundation. 

ASNC's Nuclear Cardiology Choosing Wisely Challenge made its stage debut in Boca Raton, FL, when the three competition finalists presented their proposals for ensuring that patients get the right test at the right time. The winner was selected by a panel of judges and ASNC2016 attendees, who voted via audience-response system. 
“While we ultimately decided on a winner, all of the competitors were winners in my book,” said John Held, APR, of the ABIM Foundation, who helped to judge the competition. “It was inspiring to see how each of the presenters used Choosing Wisely to address a pressing issue facing their institution and the overwhelmingly positive results of the intervention. ASNC's Choosing Wisely Challenge is a shining example of how clinicians are implementing the ideals of the campaign in practice.” 

Please join us in congratulating the winners of ASNC's 2016 Choosing Wisely Challenge.   

1st place: An Outpatient Pathway for Chest Pain Visits to the Emergency Department Reduces Length of Stay, Radiation Exposure and Is Patient-Centered, Safe and Cost-Effective, by Felix Krainski, MD, Besiana Liti, DO, and William Lane Duvall, MD, MASNC 
2nd place: Education to Reduce Rarely Appropriate Myocardial Perfusion Imaging, by David E. Winchester, MD, MS, FASNC, David C. Wymer, MD, Anita Wokhlu, MD, Vicente Taasan, MD, Christian Helfrich, PhD, Susan Stinson, RN, and Rebecca J. Beyth, MD, MSc 
3rd place: Revision of Order Entry for Myocardial Perfusion Imaging, by Erica Cohen, DO, MPH 

Thank You
ASNC thanks Bracco Diagnostics Inc for support of the Nuclear Cardiology Choosing Wisely Challenge. 

Appreciation to JNC's Awardees 

Every year, committees composed of Journal of Nuclear Cardiology (JNC) associate editors, guest editors and journal Board members select award recipients among a host of strong candidates. At ASNC2016, JNC Editor-in-Chief Ami E. Iskandrian, MD, MACC, MASNC, Journal of Nuclear Cardiology awardees, presented the following awards:   

•    Piotr Slomka, PhD, received both the Zaret-Beller JNC Distinguished Service Award, which is presented to the year's best reviewer and the Best Basic/Technical Research Paper Award for “Automatic Registration of Misaligned CT Attenuation Correction Maps in Rb-82 PET/CT Improves Detection of Angiographically Significant Coronary Artery Disease.”  
•    For her editorial “Large Animal Models of Ischemic Cardiomyopathy: Are They Enough to Bridge the Translational Gap?”, Patricia Kim Phuong Nguyen, MD, was honored with the first Ken Brown Award—an honor announced this year in tribute to ASNC's sixth president, Dr. Ken Brown. “We thought it was only fitting to establish an award to honor his memory, acknowledge his many contributions and add to his legacy,” said Dr. Iskandrian. 
•    John J. Mahmarian, MD, MASNC, was recognized with the year's Best Clinical Research Paper Award for “Regadenoson Provides Perfusion Results Comparable to Adenosine in Heterogeneous Patient Populations: A Quantitative Analysis from the ADVANCE MPI Trials.” 

Compliments to ASNC's 2016 Young Investigators Awardees  

Five finalists for the 2016 Young Investigators Awards presented their abstracts at the ASNC2016 Research Track.

The ASNC2016 stage was packed with potential when five early-career nuclear cardiologists competed for Young Investigator Awards. ASNC congratulates Omar F. Abouezzeddine, MD, for his first-prize presentation as well as competition's other finalists: Mohamed E. Alama, MB, Bch, Javier A. Gomez, MD, Christopher B. Link, MD, and Aditya Shekhar.

 
 

Tenth-grader Aditya Shekhar awed the ASNC judges with his Young Investigator Awards presentation. He has been working with Jagat Narula, MD, MASNC, and his team at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He earned second place in the competition. 

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