Podcast 118. The Braunwald Chronicles: A “Royal Screw-up” & The Discovery of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

CardioNerds (Amit Goyal, Daniel Ambinder, Carine Hamo, and Karan Desai) are honored to bring to you the Braunwald Chronicles. These are stories of discovery, innovation, accidents, perseverance, and more…truly these are the stories of cardiology, directly from a father of modern cardiology himself, Dr. Eugene Braunwald. Dr. Braunwald’s life and stories together are the saga which have brought us to this day in modern cardiology. So please join us for the Braunwald Chronicles, as we journey through the history of cardiology, across 6 extraordinary chapters.

We continue with Chapter 4 where Dr. Braunwald discusses his discoveries related to the A “Royal Screw-up” & The Discovery of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. There are hypertrophic cardiomyopathy centers of excellence sprinkled throughout the world. Comprehensive ACC/AHA guidelines for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that came out in 2020, there’s incredible drug discovery and randomized controlled trials looking at innovations in the management of HCM. We had a whole series on CardioNerds for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy where we taught about the four “Ps” or four preventions of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy management; prevent symptoms, prevent stroke in atrial fibrillation, prevent sudden cardiac death in the patient and prevent sudden cardiac death in the family. How fortunate are we to now hear all about how hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was discovered.

We thank Dr. Karan Desai, Editorial APD with the CardioNerds Academy, and fellow at University of Maryland, for all the work he put into designing the Braunwald Chronicles. Audio editing by Pace Wetstein.