Live Case from Hospital Clinico San Carlos

Dr Breda Hennessey graduated from the Third Faculty of Medicine in Charles University in Prague. Following this, she returned to Ireland to complete her general medical and higher specialist cardiology training. In 2019, she was awarded the Brian McGovern Scholarship by the Irish Cardiac Society, and this allowed her to commence her subspecialty training in Interventional Cardiology at Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid. She completed a two-year coronary interventional fellowship, with a focus on intracoronary imaging, invasive physiology and ultra-low dose contrast intervention. Following completion of her coronary training, she undertook a further fellowship in structural intervention, also at Hospital Clínico San Carlos. In addition to her clinical work, she has been involved in various research projects pertaining to ultra-low dose contrast PCI, investigating the impact of new technologies in reducing contrast burden in complex PCI . She has authored and co-authored a number of research articles, book chapters and has contributed to the European association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions textbook. During her time at Hospital Clinico San Carlos, she completed a Masters in Interventional Cardiology and is currently undertaking a PHD at the Complutense University of Madrid with a focus in ultra-low dose contrast PCI. Throughout her fellowship, she regularly took part in the preparation and delivery of educational courses, both at Hospital Clinico San Carlos and in collaboration with other tertiary referral centres and international cardiology societies in Spain, the UK and the UAE.

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. With over 30 years of experience as interventionalist, he regularly serves as live case operator and educationalist in global events. He is author of over 500 PubMed indexed scientific articles (h-index 74) on topics that include complex PCI in multivessel disease, left main and chronic total occlusions. 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. Editorial work includes two large textbooks (“Coronary Stenosis. Imaging, Structure and Physiology” and “Physiological Assessment of Coronary Stenoses and the Microcirculation) and editorial board positions in scientific journals. Board positions in scientific societies include EuroPCR, EAPCI, EuroCTO and the ESC Working Group of Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation. Additional interest incllude music and phylosophy. He is a recipient of the ESC Silver Medal and the 2022 ESC Andreas Gruentzig Award.

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.