It’s extremely unusual for a cardiologist or cardiac surgeon to die in the line of duty, but that tragedy occurred last January in Boston when the enraged son of a patient mortally shot Dr. Michael J. Davidson while he was on the job as director of endovascular cardiac surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Davidson had been an active coinvestigator in the PARTNER study since it began in 2007 to make the first direct comparison of a transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) system against aortic-valve replacement with conventional heart surgery.
Because of Dr. Davidson’s long and active involvement with the PARTNER trial, his colleagues decided to dedicate the study’s 5-year follow-up findings to him, making the announcement during the first public release of the 5-year results in mid-March at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
Mitchel L. Zoler/Fronbtline Medical News
Button memorializing Dr. Michael J. Davidson.
“On behalf of the PARTNER team, we would like to dedicate this study – the 5-year outcomes – to Mike Davidson,” said Dr. Michael J. Mack as he finished his podium presentation of the report.
Preceding Dr. Mack’s talk, the session began with brief remarks about Dr. Davidson from Dr. Martin B. Leon, coleader of the PARTNER trial, and then the airing of a 6-minute video featuring several of Dr. Davidson’s colleagues recalling his unique career and accomplishments.
Notable in their comments was the outline they provided of the unusual training and career path Dr. Davidson forged for himself, based on his remarkably prescient realization a decade or more ago that the future of cardiology and cardiac surgery lay in fusing the two into a hybrid discipline.
Dr. Davidson’s colleagues cited the training he undertook to become both a fully qualified cardiac surgeon and a skilled interventional cardiologist, turning himself into an embodiment of the “heart team.” Several in the video called him “visionary” for recognizing this fusion as an important step toward the future of treating heart disease.
The poignancy of the moment did not stop there.
After the video ended and before Dr. Mack delivered the session’s first talk, ACC president Dr. Patrick T. O’Gara presented a posthumous distinguished-service award from the ACC to Dr. Davidson – with Dr. O’Gara handing the award to the fallen surgeon’s parents, including his father, Dr. Robert M. Davidson, a long-time ACC fellow and former clinical chief of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Following the award, Dr. Athena Poppas, chair of the meeting’s program committee and cochair for the latebreaker session on heart valve replacement, stressed that the entire session was dedicated to honor Dr. Michael Davidson.
Perhaps most moving of all were the small white buttons that Dr. O’Gara, Dr. Davidson’s parents, and others wore on their lapels during the session, featuring a blue heart and the initials MJD. It combined for an affecting tribute to someone who had played a central role in transforming heart-valve replacement and then was murdered for doing this work.
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