LIVE CASE

Dr Abdul Mozid is a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Leeds General Infirmary, UK. His clinical focus is on percutaneous treatment of complex coronary disease and in particular chronic total occlusions (CTOs). He is one of the highest volume operators in the UK performing over 400 cases per annum over past 10 years with high usage of intravascular imaging and coronary physiology to optimise results. Dr Mozid has a keen interest in teaching complex PCI skillsets and regularly hosts small group seminars for consultant colleagues in his region.

Carlo Di Mario is Professor of Cardiology at the University of Florence and Director of the Structural 
Interventional Cardiology Division of the University Hospital Careggi, Florence, Italy. Previous posts included 15 years as Professor of Clinical Cardiology at Imperial College of Sciences, Medicine & Technology, London and Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital. Despite his teaching, research and administrative commitments, he maintains an active clinical involvement performing more than 100 PCI per year with special interest in the treatment of calcified lesions, chronic total occlusions, bifurcations, and diffuse disease. He is a regular TAVI operator and certified implanter for the Medtronic Evolut R and Edwards Sapien 3 transcatheter aortic valves. He participated in more than 160 MitraClip implantations in London and Florence and has recently started direct annuloplasty with the CardioBand. Professor Di Mario pioneered the use of intracoronary Doppler, pressure measurement, intravascular ultrasound, optical coherence tomography, and near infrared spectroscopy. He was PI of the OPTICUS trial, failing to demonstrate superiority of IVUS guided stenting, and of the Lipid Rich Plaque study, due to report at TCT 2018. He was Principal Investigator of the DESTINI trial, using Doppler CRF to identify lesions in need of stenting, and of the CARESS in AMI trial, a large multicentre trial showing that patients who receive fibrinolytic therapy for ST-elevation myocardial infarction benefit from early angioplasty. This trial and a subsequent meta-analysis have led to a change in the European Society of Cardiology and AHA/ACC Guidelines for treatment of STEMI patients. He cooperated with Dr Davies to the validation of iFR to assess lesion severity and discriminate the contribution of individual lesions, and with Dr Lyon in the intracoronary delivery of SERCA-2 genes via adenoviral vectors in the CUPID2 trial.

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 Chair of the EAPCI Young committee.

Prof Farrel Hellig is the Cathlab Director at Sunninghill Hospital (Johannesburg, South Africa) and Hon Professor of Cardiology at the University of Cape Town. He is involved in both the coronary and structural cardiac fields as well as peripheral interventions. Sunninghill Hospital is a referral centre for complex medical problems. In the coronary arena, his main interests are: complex multivessel disease, left main intervention, rotational atherectomy and chronic total occlusion. He has been active in the field of coronary physiology and imaging. He has many educational roles, including: director of Africa PCR, numerous presentations and live case transmissions to multiple international congresses and is a proctor for many different procedures. He has numerous publications, editorials and book chapters, and is on the editorial board of Eurointervention journal. In his spare time he plays saxophone, collects wine, cooks, and builds and flys model aircraft.

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).

Prof Maciej Lesiak is Head of the 1st Department of Cardiology in Poznan Medical University and a cardiology consultant in Greater Poland province. He obtained medical diploma at the Medical Academy in Poznan (currently the Medical University) and at this university he gained further academic degrees and promotions. He received his doctorate in 1995 defending the work entitled Structure of the sinus node in healthy persons and patients with supraventricular rhythm disorders. His specialization is internal diseases and cardiology.In 2001, he was a member of the team of Poznan cardiologists who prepared the first program for the invasive treatment of acute myocardial infarction in Greater Poland province. In 2007, he became Associate Professor based on the assessment of scientific achievements and dissertation titled “Primary coronary angioplasty in the treatment of acute phase of myocardial infarction. Early and long-term observation of 988 consecutive patients treated as part of the Greater Poland Province Program”. Prof Lesiak became a Professor of medical sciences in 2016. Prof Lesiak has been a member of the Board of the Working Group for Invasive Cardiology of The Polish Cardiac Society since 2001, and its president in years 2009 - 2011; Member of European Society of Cardiology since 2002, and a EuroPCR Program Committee Member since 2009. He is also an associate editor of the Polish Heart Journal. Prof Lesiak has published over 140 original publications in magazines such as European Heart Journal, JACC, JACC Cardiovascular Interventions, American Heart Journal, etc.

Dr Marco Lombardi is an interventional cardiology fellow at the Hospital Clinico San Carlos/Complutense University (Madrid, Spain) from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Rome, Italy). He obtained his medical degree at the Campus Bio-Medico University in 2018 (Rome, Italy), and he trained as a research fellow at the VCU Pauley Heart Center (Richmond, USA) before starting his PhD degree that he is completing at the University of Genoa (Genoa, Italy).

Dr Nieves Gonzalo is a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Clinico San Carlos University Hospital, Madrid, Spain. 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) 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 studies about neoatherosclerosis, vessel injury and healing after stent implantation and patterns of calcification in coronary disease. Dr Gonzalo is a dedicated educationalist with involvement in many areas of complex PCI. In 2022, Dr Gonzalo was appointed as a course director for EuroPCR, she also serves as a deputy editor of EuroIntervention, and as a co-chair of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) Scientific Documents and Initiatives Committee.