London 2019

Prof Andrew Sharp qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in 1998 and is Professor of Cardiology at the University Hospital of Wales and Cardiff University in the U.K. 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 Imperial College Hospitals in London. Prof Sharp was awarded an MD postgraduate research degree from the University of Edinburgh for his work on the hypertensive heart and his research interests include intracoronary imaging and physiology. as well as the use of device-based treatments for hypertension and pulmonary embolism.

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.

Professor Jacek Legutko is an interventional cardiologist with over 25 years of experience in the field. His main research interest is focused on primary PCI in acute myocardial infarction, intravascular imaging and physiology lesion assessment in the cathlab, as well as complex percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). He has performed a series of studies in those areas and has participated in many clinical trials. Professor Legutko is a Course Director at the New Frontiers in Interventional Cardiology (NFIC), an international congress organized annually in Krakow, Poland since 1999. He has also served as a Faculty member, live case operator and facilitator for several interventional cardiology meetings including EuroPCR, PCR Africa, TCT, C3, CardioEgypt, and WCCI. Professor Legutko received several professional awards, including prestigious “Andreas Award” granted for his personal impute on the development of interventional cardiology in Poland.

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 Peter O’Kane graduated from Charing Cross & Westminster Medical School in 1995 with First Class Honours Bachelor of Science BSc degree in Physiology, Medical Degree and numerous prizes including the Llewelyn Prize for the second-best distinction in medical finals. After attaining membership of the Royal College of Physicians he was subsequently awarded a Doctorate of Medicine by the University of London for a thesis on the role of nitric oxide in coronary heart disease. Dr O’Kane was appointed as Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital in July 2007. He has performed over 7000 PCI procedures as a Consultant. He routinely treats extensively calcified lesions, bifurcations including left main stem disease & chronic total occlusions. He is committed to teaching & education with local fellowship training program through to national & international proctorship of techniques & multiple adjunctive devices. He has trained Consultant colleagues from the UK, Europe, Asia & USA through local workshops and courses. He is regularly invited as faculty to National & International meetings as a presenter & live case operator. He has published over 70 manuscripts and authored 10 book chapters. He is a local principal Investigator for over 30 National & International multi-centre clinical trials & is dedicated to patient recruitment with over 900 patients recruited to trials he has managed. He has led numerous quality improvement programs, is PCI Lead, Cardiology Governance and Mortality Lead & has achieved National Bronze Clinical Excellence Award level 9. He was a nationally elected member to British Cardiovascular Intervention Society (BCIS) Council (2020-2023) and from March 2023 is a member of BCIS Research Working Group.