Optimal Online 2020 - Day 4 - Is deliberate dissection within CTO PCI unnecessary and dangerous?

Anenta is a Cardiology registrar currently undertaking her PhD at Imperial College London in arterial haemodynamics and cardiovascular risk. She has interests in medical education and public engagement.

A consultant cardiologist at Mater Private Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. Features in 20 videos on Wondr Medical. Colm Hanratty generally speaks on Fractional Flow Reserve (FFR), Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS), Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Calcium Scoring, and Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).

An interventional cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, UK. Features in 9 videos on Wondr Medical. Elliot Smith generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Live Cases, and Coronary Angiograpy.

James Spratt Professor of Interventional cardiology with a sub-speciality interest in complex PCI, intravascular imaging and CTO. He is widely published within this area and has performed live case demonstrations globally. He has an interest in medical education and is the Founder of Optima Education.

Dr Kambis Mashayekhi is Head of the Department of Internal Medicine and Cardiology in Heart Center Lahr in Germany. Dr. Mashayekhi is performing over 350 CTO-PCI’s per year and is an world-renowned CTO and complex PCI specialist. Dr. Mashayekhi is the head of the CTO working group from the German Society of cardiology and the Co-Director of MLCTO and EuroCTO course. He is the new EuroCTO president elect for 2023.

Dr. Kevin J. Croce is an interventional cardiologist and the director of the Chronic Total Occlusion Complex Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) who also directs the BWH Translational Discovery Laboratory which is a centralized research facility that uses state-of-the-art technology to perform preclinical testing of promising therapies and medical devices. Dr. Croce received his medical and Ph.D. degrees from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency, a cardiology fellowship and an interventional cardiology fellowship at BWH. Dr. Croce is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology. His clinical interests include advanced treatments for obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD), and optimization of antithrombotic and antiplatelet pharmacotherapy. The author of over 50 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Croce’s research focuses on understanding the molecular pathobiology of atherothrombotic (CAD) and on identifying new targets for CAD treatment. His research has received support from the National Institutes of Health.

After training in Scotland, Interventional Cardiology Fellowship at CUMC, and Clinical Research Fellowship at Harvard University, she was a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital and Associate Professor of Cardiology at the University of Glasgow, prior to moving back to New York in 2022.

Dr Nieves Gonzalo is Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Interventional Cardiology Department at Clinico San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid. She obtained her Specialist Certification in Cardiology after training at Clinico San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid. Subsequently, she underwent a research fellowship at Thoraxcenter, Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands) under the supervision of Professor Patrick Serruys, focused mainly in intracoronary imaging and bioabsorbable stents. In 2010 she obtained her PhD with the thesis “Optical coherence tomography for the assessment of coronary atherosclerosis and vessel response after stent implantation”. Her track record includes over 170 articles indexed in PubMed, as well as book chapters in Interventional Cardiology textbooks. Recent research projects as principal investigator includes a study about the assessment of neoatherosclerosis and its clinical impact in patients with restenosis (RIBS IV and V OCT substudy) and research regarding vessel injury and healing evaluation with different stent platforms evaluated with OCT (VISTA study). Dr Gonzalo is a dedicated educationalist with involvement in many areas of complex PCI, serving currently as Deputy Editor for Eurointervention and Committee Member of EuroPCR.

A consultant cardiologist at VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Features in 4 videos on Wondr Medical. Paul Knaapen generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), CT Coronary Angiography, and Coronary Interventions.

Dr Simon Walsh has been working as a Consultant Cardiologist at the Belfast Trust for over 10 years. It is one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK. The centre performs ~2750 PCI per year, with 650-700 STEMI and calcium modification in ~10% of our PCI cases. Dr Walsh also works internationally as an educator, teaching advanced techniques for complex PCI and CTO PCI. This involves training visiting Cardiologists in Belfast retrograde CTO techniques, antegrade dissection and re-entry CTO techniques and other advanced PCI procedures. He has visited multiple centres in the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and North America to act as a visiting proctor for complex PCI and CTO PCI cases. Dr Walsh’s research interests include PCI, coronary artery disease, defibrillation, acute coronary syndromes and chronic total occlusions. Research responsibilities have included acting as a recruiting investigator for the >25 multicentre studies over the last 17 years. He acted as a primary investigator for numerous international trials including the Evolve, Noble, Leaders Free and Ischemia multicentre studies. He has been the lead UK investigator for the October trial, Syntax 2, Recharge and Ischaemia-CTO. He is also the Chief Investigator for the Consistent CTO, Celtic Bifurcation and Discrete CTO trials.

Dr Stéphane Rinfret is an academic interventional cardiologist and world-renown expert in chronic total occlusion (CTO) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). He was appointed chief of interventional cardiology at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and associate professor of medicine at McGill University in 2016 where he built a very active chronic total occlusion (CTO) and Complex Higher-risk but Indicated Procedures (CHIP) program. He has now moved to the US to work with at Emory Healthcare and Emory University, as associate-director of complex PCI and full professor (acting) of Medicine, to pursue his academic career and busy clinical practice, mostly at Emory Saint Joseph's Hospital, the oldest hospital of Atlanta serving a very large population. Dr Rinfret has held several peer-reviewed grants, published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, several abstracts, and has been invited over 300 times to give lectures in the last 10 years. His epidemiological research focuses on health services and outcomes. He is also a high-volume and world-renown coronary operator, performing over 400 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) per year, mostly from the transradial approach and most with complex anatomies. Dr Rinfret was one of the Canadian pioneers in CTO PCI and has contributed to expand access to the technique in Canada and all around the world through sharing his expertise. He is the lead editor of a textbook on CTO PCI published by Springer in 2015, currently being reviewed for a second edition. He has performed over 1200 CTO PCIs since January 2010, one of the largest volumes in the world, including a large number of retrograde procedures, and pursues a very active teaching program of transradial and CTO PCI techniques in Canada and Europe.