ACC.27-WCC Pre-Conference Sessions

Make the most of your time in Houston by launching your ACC.27-WCC experience a day early. On Friday, April 9, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, ACC.27-WCC will offer a curated lineup of focused pre-conference sessions designed to deliver deeper learning, practical insights and a more personalized educational experience.

Led by world-renowned experts, these interactive sessions give you the opportunity to explore key areas of cardiovascular care in greater depth, engage in meaningful discussion, work through real-world challenges and translate new knowledge into practice.

Whether you want to sharpen your expertise, explore emerging approaches or gain strategies you can apply right away, ACC.27-WCC pre-conference sessions are the ideal way to maximize your learning. Select the ACC.27-WCC PLUS Package to add the pre-conference session of your choice to your registration.

QUICK LINKS: Cardio-Oncology ● Leadership and Career ● Critical Care ● Artificial Intelligence ● Imaging in Heart Failure ● Reproductive Health ● Teaching and Communicating

Advancing the Cardiovascular Care of the Oncology Patient

Cancer care is changing fast — and cardiovascular care must keep pace. This full-day, didactic and case-based pre-conference session will equip clinicians with practical strategies to prevent, detect and manage cardiovascular complications across the cancer care continuum. Through expert insights, interactive challenges and multidisciplinary discussion, participants will tackle real-world issues in risk stratification, surveillance, cardio protection, cancer therapy-related toxicities, survivorship, health equity, multidisciplinary collaborations, program building and team-based care. Designed for both emerging and experienced cardio-oncology clinicians, this session delivers actionable guidance to help improve care for patients living with and beyond cancer.

From Trainee to Attending: Leadership and Career Transitions

Fellowship prepares you for clinical care — but not always for the career-defining moments that come next. Negotiating your first contract, managing workplace conflict, building a professional network and navigating new expectations as an attending are often learned through trial and error, after the moment has already passed.

This highly interactive pre-conference workshop is designed to help Fellows in Training and Early Career cardiovascular clinicians successfully navigate the critical transition from fellowship to independent practice. Through small-group, case-based learning, participants will build practical skills in four developmental domains: Communication, Conflict and Negotiation, Purpose and Priorities, and Leadership and Culture. Participants will review a real physician contract, practice negotiation techniques, identify their conflict styles and learn how to work more effectively within manager relationships.

This full-day workshop offers deliberate practice in the non-clinical skills that shape the kind of attending you become.

Fundamentals of Hands-on Critical Care Cardiology: Learn, Practice and Perform as a Team

Don't just learn critical care cardiology. Experience it.

When a critically ill cardiovascular patient is in front of you, knowing what to do is only the beginning. You need the confidence to act. This immersive, simulation-based pre-conference session brings critical care cardiology to life, giving you a unique opportunity to sharpen the practical skills, clinical judgment, and teamwork required in high-acuity care, whether you are a cardiovascular clinician, critical care medicine practitioner, advanced practice provider, trainee, or another member of the cardiovascular care team.

Hosted at the state-of-the-art Houston Methodist Institute For Technology, Innovation & Education (MITIE), you will step beyond traditional lectures and learn by doing. Through realistic, high-fidelity clinical scenarios, expert coaching and interactive debriefing, you will practice navigating essential critical care challenges — from airway and mechanical ventilation management to mechanical circulatory support, hemodynamic assessment, critical care ultrasound, and other core procedural and team-based skills. Along the way, you'll strengthen communication, collaboration and decision-making under pressure — the skills that can make the difference when seconds count.

Whether you work in a dedicated CICU, provide consultative or co-management care, or are building your critical care expertise, this hands-on experience is designed to turn knowledge into action. Leave with practical strategies, stronger skills, and greater confidence to take back to the bedside.

Please note that you are responsible for arranging your own transportation to and from MITIE to participate in this pre-conference session.

The Future of Cardiology: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence Across the Cardiovascular Ecosystem

Implementation With Impact: A Practical Playbook For Clinical AI

This high-impact, full-day pre-conference session moves beyond AI hype to real-world application: what's working, what's next, and how to implement it with impact. Through expert insights, best practice examples, and hands-on simulation stations, you'll have the opportunity to explore how AI is reshaping diagnosis, ECG, imaging, risk prediction, workflows and patient care and gain tips and pearls you can implement in your own practice.

The day is built around the issues you are facing every day including vetting vendors and driving effective workforce adoption, post-deployment monitoring, governance and liability, and regulation and clinician upskilling. You'll leave with actionable strategies to evaluate, implement, and govern both today's tools and tomorrow's emerging innovations safely, effectively, and equitably.

This pre-conference session is not certified for continuing education credit. No credit will be awarded for participation.

Precision Multimodality Imaging in Newly Diagnosed Heart Failure: Diagnosis, Risk, Genetics and Clinical Management

Imaging-Driven Strategies For Precision Diagnosis, Prognostication and Therapy Selection

Turn complex imaging findings into confident, patient-centered decisions. Through in-depth presentations, dynamic cases and expert discussion, this pre-conference session will explore how multimodality imaging can be integrated with clinical history, biomarkers, ECG data, family history, and genetics to sharpen diagnosis, define risk, guide treatment, and plan follow-up for patients with newly diagnosed heart failure. The session will deliver practical strategies for connecting multimodality imaging to cardiomyopathy phenotype, sudden death risk, device and procedural decisions, family screening, and multidisciplinary referral — helping clinicians move from image interpretation to action.

Reproductive Health Is Cardiovascular Health: Transforming Prevention and Care Across the Lifespan

Reproductive health is cardiovascular health and this dynamic pre-conference session will show clinicians how to turn reproductive history into a powerful tool for cardiovascular prevention, risk assessment and long-term care. Through real-world cases, expert insights and interactive discussion, participants will explore how pregnancy complications, infertility, menstrual disorders, menopause, hormone therapies, fertility treatment and male reproductive health shape cardiovascular risk across the lifespan. This full-day program will deliver practical strategies that can be put to work immediately and attendees will leave ready to strengthen patient counseling, improve multidisciplinary care and bring reproductive cardiovascular health into everyday practice — from preconception and pregnancy through menopause, healthy aging and lifelong prevention.

The Science and Art of Teaching and Communicating

Cardiovascular clinicians are trained to be experts in medicine, but few receive formal training in the science of teaching or the art of communication. This interactive pre-conference session is designed to close that gap with practical tools you can use at the bedside, in a lab, or at the podium. Grounded in learning science, this session will cover presentation skills, learner engagement techniques, point-of-care teaching strategies, and the emerging role of AI in education. Open to physicians and CV Team members at every career stage, you'll leave with a practical teaching toolkit — not just a set of notes.