Assessing Coronary Microvascular Dysfunction in the Catheterization Laboratory

Prof Amir Lerman is a professor of medicine and a consultant in the cardiovascular division at the Mayo graduate school of Medicine. Prof Lerman serves as an associate chair and the director for research for the cardiovascular division and the director of the Mayo cardiovascular research center. Prof Lerman graduated from the Technion school of Medicine in Haifa Israel and completed his training in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases and invasive cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. Prof Leman interest is, coronary physiology and imaging and innovation in cardiovascular disease as well as regenerative medicine. Prof Lerman published more than 600 manuscripts, book chapters and reviews; the NIH, AHA, and several foundations support his research.

Dr. Dejan Milasinovic is an interventional cardiologist at the Department of Cardiology, Clinical Center of Serbia. He is also an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. His main research interests focus in the fields of the invasive treatment of acute coronary syndromes and complex coronary interventions, with an emphasis on bifurcation PCI and intracoronary guidance. In 2016, Dr. Milasinovic received the EuroPCR 2016 Best Abstract award, for a work on the timing of invasive coronary intervention in patients with non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. He is a member of European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) and has served as program committee member of the annual EuroPCR conference. Dr. Milasinovic also serves on the editorial boards of EuroIntervention (editorial consultant) and PCRonline, and is the Cahir of the Young EAPCI/PCR Journal Club at www.pcronline.com.

Dr. Hernán Mejía-Rentería is an Interventional Cardiologist at the Department of Cardiology, Hospital Clinico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain. He graduated from the Medical School of Universidad del Valle (Colombia) and underwent specialty training in Cardiology at Hospital Clinico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain. Subsequently, he completed his subspecialty training as Interventional Cardiologist in 2017 at the same institution. Dr. Mejía-Rentería obtained a PhD (Cum Laude) in coronary physiology in 2021 at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is a member of European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) and has published over 70 indexed scientific articles on coronary physiology, functional angiography, intracoronary imaging techniques and Takotsubo Syndrome, and is author of chapters in different academic textbooks. His main research areas at present include coronary physiology assessment with invasive and angiography derived techniques in patients with coronary artery disease or ischemia with non-obstructive coronary arteries.

Prof Javier Escaned is Head of Interventional Cardiology Section at Hospital Clinico San Carlos (Madrid, Spain). He trained as a cardiologist the United Kingdom before moving to the Thoraxcenter / Rotterdam (The Netherlands), where he obtained his PhD degree in 1994. A skilled interventionalist with over 30 years of experience, he regularly serves as live case operator and educationalist in global events like EuroPCR, TCT or the ESC Congress. He is author of over 500 PubMed indexed scientific articles (h-index 71) on topics that include complex PCI in multivessel disease (principal investigator of SYNTAX II study), left main and chronic total occlusions, and secondary revascularization. His track record in coronary physiology includes being investigator on pivotal FFR trials like DEFER (1998), collaborator with Justin Davies in the validation and clinical implementation of iFR (since 2010), and developer of new methods for the assessment of microvascular and non-obstructive coronary disease. Recent / ongoing trials as Co-PI include ADVISE, ADVISE II, DEFINE FLAIR and ABSORB II PHYSIOLOGY, being investigator also in ILUMIEN I and IV, COMBINE and other studies on coronary imaging. He is currently Deputy Editor for Interventional Cardiology of the European Heart Journal, as well as editor of two large textbooks: “Coronary Stenosis.Imaging, Structure and Physiology”, (co-editor Patrick Serruys) and “Physiological Assessment of Coronary Stenoses and the Microcirculation) (co-editor Justin Davies). Current or recent board positions in scientific societies include EuroPCR, EAPCI, EuroCTO and the ESC Working Group of Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation. Some of his additional interests are philosophy, education and music.

Tim van de Hoef, MD, PhD, FESC, is an interventional cardiology fellow at the Amsterdam UMC - VU Medical Center (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). He has been involved in intracoronary physiology research since 2010, and his research has covered the wide spectrum of intracoronary physiology assessed by means of invasive coronary pressure and flow measurements, ranging from functional stenosis severity appraisal to assessment of microvascular function in both stable coronary artery disease and acute coronary syndromes. He obtained a PhD (Cum Laude) in invasive coronary physiology in 2015. He has (co-)authored over 90 papers on the topic of coronary physiology, and his recent research has focused on the use of basal conditions for the assessment of epicardial stenosis severity, and the combined assessment of epicardial and microvascular disease to optimize diagnosis and risk-stratification in ischemic heart disease.