TAVR – Back to Basics

Dr. Arnav Kumar is a structural heart and peripheral interventions fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Harvard Medical School). His clinical and research interests include computational imaging, coronary shear stress mapping, coronary physiology, and structural interventions. His research work includes investigating various mechanisms that make an atherosclerotic plaque 'vulnerable' using complex mathematical and computational fluid dynamic modeling. He has published more than 55 manuscripts, book chapters, and over 100 abstracts in high-impact journals over the last 4 years. He has won ‘The William Parmley Young Author Achievement Award' from JACC and has received numerous young investigator awards and other top research awards at prestigious national and international cardiology conferences. He has served on multiple national committees including the Fellow in Training Leadership Council of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), first committee of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT), ACC/AHA Task Force on Clinical Data Standards and the SCAI Publication committee . Dr. Kumar regularly reviews research manuscripts for high-impact cardiology journals such as JACC, EHJ, and Atherosclerosis. He has vast experience in reviewing guidelines, data standards, and outcomes-related manuscripts through his various leadership roles in the ACC and the AHA. In his free time, Dr. Kumar likes to travel and try new restaurants with his family. He likes to play and watch cricket, soccer, and ping-pong.

John Lisko is a Structural Fellow at the Emory Structural Heart and Valve Center in Atlanta, GA. Prior to this he completed an Internal Medicine Residency, Cardiology Fellowship, and Interventional Cardiology Fellowship at Emory. In collaboration with the NIH/NHLBI he was published on the field of transcatheter electrosurgery.

Dr. Pinak Bipin Shah is director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). A cardiovascular medicine specialist, he is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed an internal medicine residency at BWH and served as chief medical resident. He then completed fellowships in cardiovascular disease, interventional cardiology and cardiovascular clinical biometrics at BWH. He is board certified in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology. Dr. Shah’s clinical interests include catheterization based techniques for the treatment of complex valvular and structural heart disease as well as complex coronary intervention. Dr. Shah’s practice focuses on trans-catheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), mitral valve interventions, PFO/ASD closure, alcohol septal ablation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) cases. Dr. Shah has received research funding from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. He has also been listed one of America’s Top Doctors by Castle Connolly.