Renowned cardiologist Arthur J. Moss passes away

Arthur J. Moss, who died Feb. 14, was known worldwide for his six-decade quest to understand and treat heart disease, for his devotion to patients and his ground-breaking collaborations with cardiologists, geneticists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians and a host of others across the Medical Center and beyond. The Bradford C. Berk Distinguished Professor of Medicine, whose research saved hundreds of thousands of lives and improved the standard of care for legions of people, was 86.

Moss, a faculty member since 1966, was founding director of URMC’s Heart Research Follow-up Program. An eminent authority on arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, he devised the first effective surgical treatment for Long QT Syndrome and had the foresight to create the International Long QT Syndrome Registry in 1979. One of the first rare disease registries in the world, it led to life-saving advances.

Moss also led the MADIT (Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial) series of clinical trials, which showed that the implantable cardioverter defibrillator significantly reduces the risk of sudden death in patients who’ve experienced a heart attack. In the early 2000s these findings changed medical guidelines worldwide and led to the use of life-saving ICD therapy in hundreds of thousands of patients.

Later, in 2009, Moss completed the MADIT-CRT trial, which found that cardiac resynchronization therapy plus defibrillator prevents the progression of heart failure in patients living with mild forms of the disease. He trained hundreds of medical students, residents, and fellows, inspiring many to dedicate their lives to medicine

—URMC PR, February 2018 (read the original NewsCenter story here.)