Well, our 2023 Family Meeting was held this past weekend in Cleveland, Ohio.
It was a wonderful success helping new families better understand the Myocarditis Journey that they are on as survivors or having lost loved ones. The new attendees to our “Family” truly had no idea what to expect despite our explanation of what it involves. The comments on our evaluations that the attendees handed in at the end of the meeting proved that we accomplished what we had hoped for…to help others understand more about the disease and what the Myocarditis Foundation does to bring others together, and provide them with resources moving forward.
In addition, we had a number of Cardiologists and Researchers who attended, that had never participated in our meetings before, and knew little or nothing of what we as a Foundation do for those dealing with Myocarditis. We included them all in our discussions and break-out sessions, where they were truly touched on hearing the stories shared by our attendees as well as seeing how we support our families. We had offers from them all to help us moving forward, in any way they can, to share information at our future meetings either in person or via Zoom.
They shared that it helped to motivate them to continue moving forward in the research and care that they provide to myocarditis patients.
We had attendees from 15 different states as well as from Canada, and the U.K. in attendance.
Since Pericarditis is also another inflammatory heart disease and often goes hand in hand with myocarditis, we had specialists talk about this disease as well. Studies in Covid Myocarditis and Covid Vaccine Myocarditis were discussed as well. A study by one of our Fellowship Grant Recipients, who was awarded a grant to study this in Canada, was very enlightening.
We always have information on the research that is being conducted, but this year especially we were honored to have updates on various Clinical Trials from around the world that are being conducted on Myocarditis and Pericarditis. These trials will hopefully result in treatments for these diseases as well as for heart failure, which can be a long-term complication of these diseases.
In addition, studies on Pediatric Myocarditis are now being conducted on mouse-models that they believe will be effective for easier diagnosis of children. A 90 second magnetic scanning of the heart which will benefit children who cannot easily tolerate lying still to have a cardiac MRI.
So many wonderful advances are in process…It was exciting to learn of them!
We’d like to sincerely thank Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals and Cardiol Therapeutics, who helped fund our meeting. Their support allowed us to provide for and ease the financial strain of attendance by our families.
Please read our upcoming newsletter that will share more of the information learned at our meeting!
