Coronary Physiology Clinical Trial Update and Review

Dr Sharp qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in 1998. He was appointed as a Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in 2011 and Honorary Associate Professor by the University of Exeter in 2018 before moving to the University Hospital of Wales in the summer of 2019. He conducted his early training at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, before moving to London for his senior clinical training. He completed the prestigious Milan-Imperial Interventional Cardiology Fellowship programme, having spent a year in San Raffaele and Columbus Hospitals, Milan, Italy, under the tutelage of Professor Antonio Colombo. He also spent three years training in interventional cardiology at St Mary’s Hospital and The Hammersmith Hospital (Imperial College Hospitals) in London. Dr Sharp was awarded an MD postgraduate research degree from the University of Edinburgh for his work on the hypertensive heart and led a large research programme at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, which he is now establishing in Wales. He has been Principal Investigator in more than 30 ethically-approved research trials since 2012 and has published extensively. He has an international reputation for leading the development of device-based treatments for hypertension (in particular that of renal denervation) and pulmonary embolism, as well as the advancement of intracoronary imaging and physiology.

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.

Dr Ricardo Petraco is a NIHR Lecturer in interventional Cardiology at Imperial College London, performing his clinical work at Hammersmith Hospital. He has been working with coronary physiology at Imperial since 2010 on the development of the novel instantaneous wave-Free Ratio (iFR). Dr Petraco’s work with iFR has led to the proposition of the Hybrid iFR-FFR approach and has established iFR’s close relationship with coronary flow reserve (CFR). His interests in computer programming has led to the development of a software for automated analysis of coronary haemodynamics signals which is been used by many leading centres in the world. He has also pioneered the algorithm for iFR calculation without the need for an ECG signal, an approach which is now implemented in clinical consoles. He has secured several research grants and published extensively in the field of coronary physiology. His current research interests are on the development of methodologies to assess stenosis severity in situations of haemodynamic instability and on the understanding of how medical therapies modulate coronary resistance and flow. Clinically, his interests also include the use of intravascular imaging modalities to optimise PCI and has been engaged in IVUS training for cathlab staff and cardiology trainees.

Dr. Nijjer is a Consultant Cardiologist and Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London. He works at both the Hammersmith Hospital and Chelsea & Westminster Foundation NHS Trust, as well as leading private Hospitals in London including the Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals. He is the President-elect of the Cardiology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and he was selected as an Emerging Leader for the British Cardiovascular Society. He specialises in coronary intervention and focused his clinical practice in the management of ischaemic heart disease. His practice encompasses all aspects of cardiology. In his PhD research, funded by the Medical Research Council (UK) and awarded by Imperial College he developed of new intracoronary physiology techniques, specifically iFR and iFR-pullback and Co-registration. He has published almost 100 peer-reviewed papers in respected journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. He has also written several books.