Stephen Long of Bethlehem, medical student at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, presents research at interventional cardiology conference

2018 Mar 8

Stephen Long of Bethlehem, a second-year medical student at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, and Geisinger cardiologist, Dr. Stephen Voyce, chief of Cardiology at Geisinger Community Medical Center for the Geisinger Heart Institute, recently presented a research poster at the interventional cardiology conference, Cardiovascular Research Technologies (CRT) 18.

CRT 18 was attended by more than 2,500 interventional and endovascular specialists.

Long completed the research, entitled, "Transitioning from Femoral to Radial Access for Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in the Acute Treatment of STEMI: A Community Medical Experience," under Dr. Voyce's supervision as part of Geisinger Commonwealth's Summer Research Immersion Program (SRIP).

"We know that patients who receive catheterization and intervention via the radial artery have better outcomes than those who are accessed through the femoral artery. However, radial access is a more technically difficult procedure. Our study sought to determine if a transition to radial access for catheterization in the setting of emergent ST-segment elevation myocardial infarctions affected the time required to complete the procedure. We found that access radial procedure was not taking longer, demonstrating the viability of this transition in a community hospital setting" Long said.

The poster was presented during a session at CRT 18, which took place March 3-6 in Washington, DC.

Long, who will graduate from Geisinger Commonwealth in 2020 said he hopes to pursue cardiology as his medical specialty.