Oddný Brattberg Gunnarsdóttir, a resident in internal medicine, delivered the presentation “The Icelandic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy project: a recall-by-genotype study on MYBPC3 founder mutation carriers. Echocardiographic data and B-type natriuretic peptide measurement.” The presentation is part of her PhD project, which focuses on research into hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in Iceland, specifically studying carriers of mutations that cause the disease. The project is Oddný’s PhD research at the University of Iceland, supervised by Berglind Aðalsteinsdóttir at Landspítali University Hospital, in collaboration with Gunnar Þór at SAk and Davíð O. Arnar at Landspítali, and in partnership with deCODE genetics. The study continues the work initiated in Berglind’s PhD project, which was previously supervised by Gunnar Þór. The presentation took place in the session “Advancing care in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy”, chaired by two of the world’s leading experts in the field, Caroline Coats from Glasgow and Michelle Michels from Rotterdam.

Oddný also presented “The white heart – myocardial calcification after soft tissue infection with streptococcus pyogenes and multi-organ failure. As seen by four different cardiac imaging modalities.” Co-authors, in addition to Gunnar Þór and Oddný, were Björn Flygenring and Ævar Örn Úlfarsson, cardiologists at Landspítali. The case report described an extremely rare condition diagnosed at SAk, in which myocardial calcification developed following a severe streptococcal infection and multi-organ failure. Only a handful of such cases have ever been reported. This presentation was part of the session “Challenges in heart failure: multimodality imaging.”

In addition to contributing to the scientific program, the physicians used the opportunity to meet with collaborators and research partners from both Europe and the United States, gaining new knowledge and strengthening international connections within their field.