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Student Presentation Wins Top Honor in Miami

Krish Dewan, a rising third-year College of Medicine student, received the highest award given at the Association of VA Surgeons (AVAS) annual meeting in Miami Beach. He received the Lloyd S. Rogers Award for Overall Best Paper/Presentation for a project that he and his twin brother, Karan Dewan, also a rising third-year medicine student, conducted during the 2017-18 academic year: “Nationwide Trends and Outcomes of Cardiovascular Surgery in Patients with Opioid Use Disorder.’’

As Krish Dewan told his Miami audience, high-risk opioid use predisposes patients to significant cardiovascular risks, including high rates of death from infective endocarditis among intravenous drug users. Anticipating that more of the opioid-dependent population will require cardiac surgery given the opioid epidemic, the study aimed to establish the safety of operating on these patients, as well as to explore surgical outcomes.

The brothers led the study in collaboration with a team of researchers in the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in the Heart and Vascular Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.