Controversies in Physiologic Lesion Assessment

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.

A director of cath lab at National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, Beijing, China. Features in 1 video on Wondr Medical. Bo Xu generally speaks on Imaging, Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS), Coronary Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), Acute Coronary Syndromes (ACS), and Coronary Flow Reserve (CFR).

Carlos Collet Bortone completed his education as interventional cardiologist at the Dante Pazzanese Institute of Cardiology in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2011 with training in cardiac computed tomography angiography at the Holy Cross Hospital, Florida, USA. Dr. Collet Bortone continued his education with a doctorate in Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Amsterdam with his Ph.D. thesis focused on the expansion of the current indication of cardiac CT to patients with complex coronary artery disease. Currently practices as interventional cardiologist at OLV-Aalst, Belgium. Dr. Collet Bortone has published more than 80 peer review articles and his research focused on the integration of cardiac imaging and physiology.

David Erlinge received an MD at Lund University, Sweden 1990 followed by a PhD at the same university. He has been a visiting research fellow at Cornell Univ. Med. Coll., New York, NY. The clinical speciality is invasive cardiology (PCI). In 2006 he received the The Lars Werkö distinguished research fellowship and in 2008 he was appointed Professor in Cardiology at Lund University. The research is focused on acute coronary syndromes, vulnerable plaque, therapeutic hypothermia, cardioprotection and platelet function. He has written >300 original articles.

Dr. William Fearon graduated from Dartmouth College and received his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He completed an Internal Medicine residency at Stanford University Medical Center serving an extra year as a Medical Chief Resident. He completed a General Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology fellowship at Stanford, spending his third year as the Chief Cardiology Fellow. He is currently a Professor of Cardiology and Director of Interventional Cardiology at Stanford University School of Mediciner. Dr. Fearon is board certified in cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology, and he is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Dr. Fearon’s primary area of research interest is in coronary physiology. He was the US principal investigator and senior author of the FAME trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and was a co-principal investigator and senior author of the FAME 2 trial, also published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He is now the principal investigator of the international FAME 3 trial comparing bypass surgery to fractional flow reserve guided percutaneous coronary intervention. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, JACC Cardiovascular Interventions, and Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions. He was the principal investigator on an R01 and is the PI on an R61/R33 NIH award evaluating cardiac allograft vasculopathy early after transplantation. Dr. Fearon’s clinical activities include not only percutaneous coronary intervention, but also transcatheter aortic valve replacement. He was a coauthor on the PARTNER 2A Trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Prof Javier Escaned is Head of Section (Interventional Cardiology Section) at Hospital Clinico San Carlos / Complutense University (Madrid, Spain). He trained in the United Kingdom as Specialist in Cardiology and obtained his PhD in The Netherlands. Author of >600 indexed scientific articles on interventional cardiology, imaging and physiology (h-index 74) and over 30 years of experience as PCI operator, he regularly lectures and performs live cases at major scientific and educational meetings. He is a recipient of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Silver Medal and the Andreas Grüntzig Award for his contributions to the fiedl fo Interventional Cardiology. Main areas of expertise include complex PCI, intracoronary diagnostics and functional coronary angiography. His track record in coronary physiology comprises being investigator on pioneer FFR trials like DEFER (1998), collaborator with Justin Davies in the validation and clinical implementation of iFR, and developer of new tools for the assessment of coronary microcirculation. Editorial roles include Deputy Editor EHJ, Advisory Editor Eurointervention, editor of the textbooks “Coronary Stenosis: Imaging, Structure and Physiology” and “Physiological Assessment of Coronary Stenoses and the Microcirculation". Recent board positions include EAPCI board / Education Committee Chair, ESC WG Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation, EuroCTO Board. Recent trials as Principal Investigator include ADVISE II, DEFINE FLAIR, SYNTAX II, PIONEER IV, Cerebral-Coronary-Connection (C3), DCR4Contrast, INOCA LongCovid and AID ANGIO. Additional interests are philosophy and music.

Dr Justin Davies is founder and CEO of Wondr Medical, inventor of iFR, and clinical academic and consultant interventional cardiologist at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

A consultant cardiologist at Wessex Cardiothoracic Unit, Southampton University Hospital, Southampton, UK. Features in 14 videos on Wondr Medical. Nick Curzen generally speaks on Covid19 Managing Covid, Coronary Interventions, Left Main Stem (LMS), Anti-Platelet Drugs , and Drug Eluting Stents (DES).

Nils Johnson, MD, MS, is a Professor of Medicine and holds the Weatherhead Distinguished Chair of Heart Disease at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth (Houston). After his undergraduate degree in Vancouver, he completed medical school at Columbia University in Manhattan and trained at Northwestern University in Chicago. He is an "interventional physiologist" and his research and clinical interests span both invasive (mentored by Dr. Nico Pijls in Eindhoven) and non-invasive (mentored by Dr. Lance Gould in Houston) methods. He has served as the principal investigator for international trials like CONTRAST (NCT02184117) and DEFINE-FLOW (NCT02328820).

A chairman , heart institute at Asan Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea. Features in 18 videos on Wondr Medical. Seung-Jung Park generally speaks on Imaging, Left Main Stem (LMS), Bifurcation, Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), and Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVR / TAVI).

Tom is a patient-centred Interventional Cardiologist at Gosford Hospital on Northern Sydney's Central Coast (NSW, Australia). He was born in Edinburgh and attended the University of Dundee graduating aged 22 with MBChB (Hons) receiving the Captain WA Low Prize and Medal as most distinguished graduate in Medicine. He emigrated to Australia 10 years ago after gaining the MRCP at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. In 2015, he completed his FRACP during advanced cardiology training in Sydney (Prince of Wales Hospital and St George Hospital). In 2019, Dr Ford returned from a three-year fellowship in Glasgow (Golden Jubilee National Hospital). This centre has the largest volume for coronary stents in the UK and his cardiology training in two continents exposed him to a high volume of interventional cardiology procedures including complex cardiac intervention, acute emergency percutaneous coronary intervention (i.e. emergency intervention for heart attack), advanced multimodal coronary imaging, structural heart interventions and novel invasive therapies for resistant hypertension. During his time in Glasgow, he developed his research interest in coronary artery disease performing an internationally recognized clinical trial involving invasive physiological testing for angina patients helping to improve their quality of life. His PhD was submitted in 2019 to the University of Glasgow and won the Bellahouston Medal as the highest distinction for the excellence of theses submitted for the degrees of MD, DDS and PhD. This work is directly relevant to help diagnose and manage patients with angina, chest pain and/or breathlessness. He is an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a Senior Lecturer at University of Newcastle (NSW). Dr Ford is an invited speaker and faculty at leading international cardiology scientific sessions including EuroPCR, Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT in USA) and European Society of Cardiology (ESC congress). His research has been published in leading cardiology journals and was recently recognized with two accolades including EuroPCR Best Abstract (Winner PCR’s Got Talent) and from the British Cardiac Society (‘Best of the Best’ Clinical Abstract – Interventional Cardiology). Outside of work, Tom is a golfer, surfer, runner and enjoys spending time with his wife (Naomi) and dog (Maisie).

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.