TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR ULC PCI

Alejandro Travieso was born in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain), he got his degree in Medicine at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 2014, including a 1-year stage at La Sapienza University in Rome as part of the Erasmus program. Later, he specialized in Cardiology at Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid. From 2020 to 2022, he was a fellow in the Interventional Cardiology unit at Hospital Clinico San Carlos. Since January 2023 he is performing a fellowship in structural interventions at Rigshospitalet (Copenhagen, Denmark). He has collaborated in several research projects, such as the Cerebral Coronary Connection study (C3), in which he had a principal role, and the ongoing AID-Angio study. In addition, he will be finishing his PhD in coronary interventions and physiology by the end of 2024. His main areas of expertise are complex PCI, coronary physiology and intravascular imaging.

Dr Breda Hennessey graduated from the Third Faculty of Medicine in Charles University in Prague. Following this, she returned to Ireland to complete her general medical and higher specialist cardiology training. In 2019, she was awarded the Brian McGovern Scholarship by the Irish Cardiac Society, and this allowed her to commence her subspecialty training in Interventional Cardiology at Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid. She completed a two-year coronary interventional fellowship, with a focus on intracoronary imaging, invasive physiology and ultra-low dose contrast intervention. Following completion of her coronary training, she undertook a further fellowship in structural intervention, also at Hospital Clínico San Carlos. In addition to her clinical work, she has been involved in various research projects pertaining to ultra-low dose contrast PCI, investigating the impact of new technologies in reducing contrast burden in complex PCI . She has authored and co-authored a number of research articles, book chapters and has contributed to the European association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions textbook. During her time at Hospital Clinico San Carlos, she completed a Masters in Interventional Cardiology and is currently undertaking a PHD at the Complutense University of Madrid with a focus in ultra-low dose contrast PCI. Throughout her fellowship, she regularly took part in the preparation and delivery of educational courses, both at Hospital Clinico San Carlos and in collaboration with other tertiary referral centres and international cardiology societies in Spain, the UK and the UAE.

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 Giuseppe Colletti is a specialist in interventional cardiology at the Clinique Saint-Joseph in Arlon, Belgium where his focus is on developing and handling the complex PCI program. He did a fellowship in interventional cardiology at Hôpital Jolimont in La Louvrière, focusing on complex coronary lesions treatment with particular regards to calcified lesions, as well as at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège – Sart Tilman. He graduated from medical from the University of Palermo on 2010 and he specialized in cardiology at the University of Sassari in 2016. Dr Colletti has been a published author in peer-reviewed journals and is planning on publishing more in the future as he has been increasingly involved in clinical research.

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.

Professor Robert Julian Gil, a graduate of the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin (September 1984) has been employed since November 2001 in Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration (since January 2023 National Medical Institute of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration in Warsaw. Currently (since June 2022) as the head of the Cardiology Department created as a result of the merger of two previously operating cardiological clinics. In 1997-2004 he was the Chair of the Invasive Cardiology Section (Working Group) of the Polish Cardiac Society, and a member of its Board (as a past president) for the next 3 years. He served as the member of the Polish Cardiac Society Board for two cadencies (2015-2019). In the elections in 2021, he was appointed president-elect of the Polish Cardiac Society. His achievements include: over 240 publications in peer-reviewed journals (total IF above 500), co-authorship of over 30 chapters of books on interventional cardiology and more than 300 convention reports presented at prestigious international conventions on clinical electrophysiology and invasive cardiology. He initiated annual National Workshops on Interventional Cardiology, which after 5 editions in Szczecin was moved to Warsaw as the Warsaw Course on Cardiovascular Interventions (www.wcci.pl). Their 27th edition was held in April 2023. He is a member of Editorial Boards of most prestigious cardiological journals as: Polish Heart Journal, Cardiology Journal, Advances in Interventional Cardiology. Since 2009 he has regularly reviewed papers sent by to the American Journal of Cardiology, Journal of American College of Cardiology, EuroIntervention, Journal of Interventional Cardiology and Circulation. In June 2000 he was awarded a prestigious title of the Fellow of European Society of Cardiology. Since 2007 he has been a member of the exclusive European Bifurcation Club handling the questions of diagnostics and treatment of bifurcation lesions. Since 2001 he has been regularly invited to actively participate (Faculty member) in such prestigious Congresses and Workshops of Interventional Cardiology as: EuroPCR, TCT, TCT Russia, ICI in Tel Aviv, CBS in Nanjing, European Bifurcation Club meetings and many national congresses

Dr Roberto Spina is an Interventional Cardiologist trained in Australia and the USA and is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He specialises in transcatheter structural heart interventions, having undertaken a Structural Heart Intervention Advanced Fellowship at the New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in New York, USA, and complex coronary intervention. He strongly believes in the routine use of intravascular imaging in performing percutaneous coronary intervention.

Sa’ar Minha MD is a professor of cardiology at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and the director of interventional cardiology at Shamir Medical Center, Be’er Yaakov in Israel- one of the largest government-owned hospitals in the country. He also serves as the secretary of the interventional cardiology working group under the Israel Heart Society. Prof. Minha earned his MD degree from Tel-Aviv University in Israel and completed an internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at Shamir Medical Center. His interventional cardiology fellowship was completed in 2014 at the Washington Hospital Center, affiliated with Georgetown University, Washington DC under Prof. Ron Waksman, Prof. Gus Pichard, and Prof. Lowell Satler. Prof Minha is an active speaker and an invited faculty for major international cardiology conferences and the co-author of over 110 original research publications. His main interests are complex coronary interventions combining physiology and imaging for optimizing results and outcomes, interventions for pulmonary embolism, renal denervation for treating hypertension, and interventions under mechanical circulatory support.