Diagnosis and management of patients with INOCA: a crash-course

Divaka Perera graduated in medicine from Cambridge University and completed his early clinical training at Addenbrooke’s, Papworth and West Suffolk hospitals. He undertook specialist training in cardiology in south London and sub-speciality training in interventional cardiology at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals. In 2008, he received a senior lectureship award from the Department of Health, Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC). He was also appointed to the post of consultant cardiologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital. He was promoted to reader in interventional cardiology in 2013 and to professor of cardiology in 2017. In addition to his clinical and research roles, he teaches undergraduate medical students and supervises postgraduate researchers towards MSc, MD and PhD degrees at King’s College London.

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 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 a honorary 
interventional cardiologist at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College NHS Trust, London. After training at Imperial College, he won a prestigious BHF research fellowship to study arterial haemodynamics. Since then he has continued to
work on the development of mathematical algorithms to aid understanding of large artery physiology and to develop new tools to assess arterial disease. The holder of several patents,
he has published widely in the field of hypertension, coronary and large artery physiology and is the winner of many national and international awards. He has several international collaborations, and is the developer of iFR and the co-principal investigator of the ADVISE studies, the DEFINE-FLAIR, ORBITA and DEFINE-PCI studies. Justin also has an interest in renal denervation, and has lead the first-in-man studies to evaluate the safety of this technique to patients with chronic systolic heart failure (REACH studies).

Niels van Royen is an interventional cardiologist and Head of Department of Cardiology at the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has a background in pre-clinical research and is head of a research group on translational research in repair mechanisms in ischemic heart disease. Also he is principal investigator of several multi-center clinical trials like the TRANSIENT, COACT, REDUCE-MVI and iMODERN. These trials focus on timing of interventional procedures as well as the use of intra-coronary physiology to guide interventional procedures both in stable coronary artery disease as well as acute coronary syndromes.

Associate Professor Nigel Jepson BMed Sci, MB BS, FRACP, FCSANZ, FSCAI is Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at the Eastern Heart Clinic and Director of the Clinical Trials Unit at the Prince of Wales Public Hospital in Sydney, Australia. He holds the position of Conjoint Professor at the University of New South Wales. Associate Professor Jepson trained in Tasmania and completed clinical and cardiac interventional training at Harefield Hospital in London and the Eastern Heart Clinic in Sydney. He is a high volume interventionalist, practicing over the last 20 years with a specific interest in bifurcation and left main-stem disease, new stent technology and intra- coronary imaging. He has performed more than 10,000 coronary procedures and heads a transcatheter aortic valve replacement program. Associate Professor Jepson is a regular invited speaker, faculty member and live-case operator for interventional forums and meetings in USA, Europe, Asia and Australasia (including EuroPCR, TCTAP, C3, AICT, ANZET, Nanjing CBS, Malaysia Live, SCAI and the European Bifurcation Club). He is an author or co-author of more than 80 published papers and principal investigator on 30 major international, multicentre trials.