Dissection RCA – case presentation

Dr. AK does his best to treat patients on the basis of appositeness of the procedure and not technical intricacy. He strongly thinks that the focus is on the interventional cardiologist to be reliably trained so that the right patients (irrespective of the intricacy of the procedure) could be treated, and not only the ones the cardiologist is able to do due to his/her limited competences. This central philosophy has allowed Dr. AK to not just be a distinguished operator but also train thousands of cardiologists worldwide in intricate coronary interventions, such as chronic total occlusion PCI (believed to be the most intricate angioplasty process), over the past six years. He has carried out several extremely intricate procedures in Asia and the United States with great success and a flawless safety record. Furthermore, he has been trained in structural interventions and peripheral angioplasties at the Cleveland Clinic. After completing his MBBS from Madras Medical College in India, he became a part of several renowned institutes like the Geisinger Medical Center, University of Maryland, and Cleveland Clinic (all in the United States). Moreover, he is a member of the American College of Cardiology and Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. Today, Arun Kalyanasundaram is a renowned leader in the domain of Chronic Total Occlusion Interventions in the United States and rest of the world. He has served in many leadership roles such as Chief of Cardiology and Cath Lab Director at Highline Medical Centre and Head of the CTO PCI programme at Swedish Medical Centre (both in the United States). He acts as a consultant to many firms in the domain of CTOs and is one of the most popular proctors for teaching this process in the United States and globally. Apart from holding an academic position at the University of Washington, Seattle, he has also been a full-time proctor for CTOs in Asia Pacific and has assisted in propagating the “Hybrid CTO” methodology. He also has several publications in the domain and has carried out chaired sessions and live cases. He is a revered speaker in this domain. Currently, he is the chief of Cardiology at Chennai’s Promed Hospital. He is also an Honorary Director, Interventional Cardiology at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (New Delhi), and the Head of the CTO PCI program as well, which is the first of its kind in the country. He has established the CHIP-CTO INDIA [COMPLEX HIGH RISK INDICATED PATIENTS (CHIP) – CHRONIC TOTAL OCCLUSION (CTO)] conference, along with some other leaders in interventional cardiology in India, to teach cardiologists how to tackle intricate coronary interventions, which are high-risk and chronic total occlusions.