Cochrane Collaboration and CIESAL participate in conference on cardiovascular research

8/04/2024

Last Thursday 28th March 2024, the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases of the School of Medicine of the University of Valparaiso, directed by Dr. Oneglio Pedemonte, organised a scientific conference entitled “Local gaps in cardiovascular research” which hosted the workshop “Strategies for searching cardiovascular clinical evidence”.

Dr. Nicolás Meza, member of the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, CIESAL researcher and part of the grant FONDECYT 1212037, presented the results obtained regarding the needs and opportunities for the generation of local knowledge in the cardiovascular field. Dr. Meza shared the key findings of the project, showing how the areas where there is no research addressing relevant clinical questions on interventions and priority clinical outcomes at the national level were determined. The main objective of this project was to generate a body of evidence with all Chilean clinical research between 2000 and 2020 to establish how the topics addressed by Chilean researchers align with the prioritisation of health conditions according to disease burden.

The event counted with the special participation of Camila Escobar, a foreign visitor. Camila Escobar is a librarian and information specialist at the Cochrane Collaboration (Cochrane Associate Centre at Instituto Universitario Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina).  She developed an open workshop on advanced methodologies for searching and retrieving relevant information and studies. This workshop provided attendees with up-to-date tools and techniques for optimising database searching, and for data retrieval in evidence synthesis and cardiovascular research.

The Department of Cardiovascular Diseases offers specialisation programmes in Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, as well as teaching undergraduate programmes and specialties such as Imaging, Internal Medicine, among others. The Cardiology programme has just completed its self-evaluation process and achieved accreditation for seven years, the maximum period that can be obtained.

The conference was held in the Conference Room of the Dr Jorge Kaplan Foundation, starting at 16:00 hours, and was attended by a diverse audience of professionals, medical interns, residents of medical specialities, academics and specialists in the field of cardiovascular diseases.  The event was also delivered in a hybrid manner, allowing for the remote connection of academics from other departments at our School of Medicine.