OPCI Journal Club: A Conversation with Dr. Stone: Initial Invasive or Conservative Strategy for Stable Coronary Disease

Allen Jeremias, MD, MSc, is the Director of Interventional Cardiology Research and Associate Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York. He is also a member of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York City where he currently serves as the Director of the Physiology Core Laboratory. He completed his medical training at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Harvard Medical School. He has been a high volume interventional cardiologist since 2006 and recognized as a Top Doctor in the New York Metro Area by Castle Connolly. Dr. Jeremias has significantly contributed to advancing the field of interventional cardiology and he is considered one of the foremost authorities in coronary physiology and intravascular imaging. He is a co-director of the annual St. Francis Intravascular Imaging and Coronary Physiology Workshop, teaching physicians around the world on “Precision Angioplasty”. Dr. Jeremias is presently engaged in a major global study that could change the path of treating clogged arteries. Known as the ILUMIEN IV trial, this major clinical study is evaluating Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to guide coronary stent placement. He is also the principal investigator of DEFINE PCI, an international study on assessing the improvement in blood flow after stent placement for severe coronary blockages.

Dr. Evan Shlofmitz is an Interventional Cardiologist and the Director of Intravascular Imaging at St. Francis Hospital - The Heart Center in Roslyn, NY. He completed a fellowship in Interventional Cardiology at Georgetown University/MedStar Washington Hospital Center. He previously completed an Intravascular Imaging and Physiology fellowship at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), a Cardiovascular Disease fellowship at Northwell Health and served as Chief Resident for Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian Queens. He serves on SCAI's IHD Council and is a co-director of Optimizing PCI (OPCI). His research interests have centered on intravascular imaging, the treatment of calcified coronary artery disease, in-stent restenosis and the optimization of stent implantation, with more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Gregg W. Stone, MD, FACC, MSCAI is an interventional cardiologist and Director of Academic Affairs for the Mount Sinai Heart Health System and Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Professor of Population Health Sciences and Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY. Dr. Stone has served as the national or international principal investigator for more than 120 national and international multicenter randomized trials (many of which have led to new device approval or indications in the US), has authored more than 2000 manuscripts and abstracts published in the peer-reviewed literature, and has delivered thousands of invited lectures around the world. With a 2018 H-factor of 152, Dr. Stone was recently listed in Nature Medicine as one of the most prolific authors in science. Dr. Stone's areas of expertise include interventional therapies of acute coronary syndromes, myocardial infarction and cardiogenic shock; drug-eluting stents and bioresorbable scaffolds; left main and complex coronary artery disease intervention; antiplatelet and antithrombotic pharmacotherapies; transcatheter valve repair and replacement; interventional hypertension and heart failure therapies; left atrial appendage closure; intravascular imaging (IVUS, OCT and NIRS); vulnerable plaque diagnosis and treatment; adjunctive interventional devices including atherectomy, distal embolic protection, thrombectomy, covered stents, chronic total occlusion devices, and brachytherapy; saphenous vein graft therapies; contrast nephropathy; clinical trial design; and regulatory issues. Dr. Stone is the director of TCT, the world's largest symposium devoted to interventional cardiology and vascular medicine. Dr. Stone founded the annual National Interventional Cardiology Fellow's Course and Transcatheter Valve Therapies TVT), the Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO) Summit, and co-directs multiple other meetings in the US, China, Russia, Europe, S. Korea and elsewhere.

An internationally recognized interventional cardiologist, Dr. Moses has performed more than 15,000 interventional procedures, authored over 600 publications, and served as lead investigator for numerous national and international clinical studies that have demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of coronary stent placement. In 2002, Dr. Moses was the lead investigator on a large clinical trial, the first in the U.S. that demonstrated the enormous benefit that led to FDA approval of the first drug-coated stent now used in the majority of interventional procedures in the U.S. Most recently in on the Executive Committee of PARTNER trial; they brought the first transcatheter aortic valve to clinical use in the U.S. He currently serves as Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Therapeutics at Columbia University Medical Center and as Director of Advanced Cardiac Interventions at St Francis Hospital and Heart Center in Roslyn, NY. He is also a pioneer in developing approaches involving minimally invasive surgery, angioplasty, gene therapy, novel imaging technologies and various support devices that allow for wider application of interventional cardiovascular procedures.

Ziad Ali is the Director of the DeMatteis Cardiovascular Institute, Director of Investigational Interventional Cardiology, and Director of Cardio-nephrology at St Francis Hospital & Heart Center in New York. He is also Director of the Angiographic Core Laboratory at Cardiovascular Research Foundation and Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. His clinical research interests focus on the use of intravascular imaging and physiology technologies such as optical coherence tomography, intravascular ultrasound, and flow wire assessment to optimize coronary interventions, for which he has served as a Global principal investigator on a number of trials. Dr. Ali is also a recognized innovator, playing an integral role in the development of the Resting Full-Cycle Ratio (RFR) and Shockwave intravascular lithotripsy. Clinically Dr. Ali developed pioneering techniques to perform vascular interventions without contrast administration, including IVUS-guided zero-contrast PCI and OCT using saline flush media, protecting patients with advanced kidney disease from acute kidney injury and the need for dialysis.