Debates, Deep Dives, and Prevention Strategies: What to Expect at ASPC 2025 With David J. Maron, MD, FASPC

The ASPC Congress on CVD Prevention will run August 1-3 in Boston, with this year’s meeting also celebrating the 40th anniversary of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. With 600 attendees able to choose from 13 sessions over 2.5 days, there is sure to be something to catch everyone’s attention and pique their interest. The theme for this year’s meeting is “inclusiveness and the care of one and all at risk for cardiovascular disease,” which president-elect David J. Maron, MD, FASPC, Stanford University School of Medicine, says will encompass all career stages, all clinicians providing preventive cardiovascular care, and the scope of cardiovascular conditions that are amenable to prevention.

In this preview of the congress, Maron pulls back the curtain on hot topics of interest—such as lipoprotein(a) (Lp[a]), artificial intelligence, glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, and debates on somewhat controversial topics in preventive cardiology—and how lessons he has learned from current ASPC president Michael Shapiro, DO, FASPC, Wake Forest University, will shape his own term set to commence at the 2026 meeting.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

How will the theme of “inclusiveness and the care of one and all at risk for cardiovascular disease” be woven throughout the congress?

We want to include people at different stages of their careers, and we want to include all clinicians who provide preventive cardiovascular care, because it takes a team to provide optimal preventive care. Also inclusive in the scope of cardiovascular conditions that are amenable to prevention. For example, heart failure and atrial fibrillation—it's not just coronary disease—and then also inclusive in terms of the spectrum of the stages of disease, all the way from primordial prevention to primary prevention and secondary prevention, so people at different life stages and different places in the process of disease.

What sessions and presentations would you like to highlight?

I have to say that I'm really looking forward to the whole thing. We have a fantastic faculty, and they're going to be presenting and debating on a range of topics that I think are of pressing interest, like Lp(a) and artificial intelligence, and, for example, the use of anti-inflammatory medications. We're going to be doing a deep dive into GLP-1s. Paul Ridker, MD, MPH, will be making the case for universal screening for LDL [low-density lipoprotein] and hs-CRP [high-sensitivity C-reactive protein] and Lp(a), and on and on. There are going to be some great debates. I think that there's a lot to be looking forward to.

Can you preview your participation in the debate, “Serial Anatomic Imaging Is the Best Way to Monitor Response to Therapy for Patients With Atherosclerosis”?

I cannot tell you if I'm going to be pro or con, because I don't know. This was actually Mike Shapiro's [Michael Shapiro, DO, FASPC, Wake Forest University, and current ASPC president] idea, that he will flip a coin before our debate and that's how we're going to find out which of us takes the pro and which takes the con position. We're both prepared to take either side of the debate. It's about a method of monitoring patients that is not yet in our guidelines, but is something that some of us do, and so we'll debate the topic.

As moderator of the Saturday case presentations panel, can you tell us about the cases being presented and why this session is important?

Well, this session is important, I think because we're addressing some clinical scenarios that come up not infrequently and about which there is some controversy. The first is a patient who presents without any symptoms but has a coronary calcium score greater than 1000. Should that patient undergo stress testing? Angiography? Should it depend on where the calcium is located? How should they be treated? Is this somebody who should be considered to have coronary disease? These are some of the issues that will arise in that case discussion. Another case is a patient who, again, is asymptomatic but for some reason has undergone a cardiac evaluation leading to angiography and has 3-vessel coronary disease. How should that patient, that asymptomatic patient with 3-vessel disease, be managed? The third case is how to manage a lipid disorder in somebody who is pregnant and/or breastfeeding, so lipid management for the women in pregnancy or postpartum breastfeeding.

What lessons do you hope to take from current ASPC president Mike Shapiro, DO, FASPC, and how will you use them to shape your presidency?

Dr Shapiro is doing a great job as our president, and he's modeling for me how I can serve in his footsteps. There are a variety of things that I want to continue and optimize to the best of my ability: exposing trainees to the field, defining better what is preventive cardiology. Believe it or not, I don't think that you'd get the same answer if you ask 10 people. A goal of Dr Shapiro's that I want to help us achieve is certification of clinicians as specialists in this field and to be able to recognize programs as centers of excellence if they hit various milestones. I want to continue to develop collaborations with preventive cardiology societies in other countries and definitely to support the journal of our society, The American Journal of Preventive Cardiology. Those are examples that he has set that I want to continue in my own term when the time comes.