Complex anatomical subsets (I)

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 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).

Dr Nieves Gonzalo is Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Interventional Cardiology Department at Clinico San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid. 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) under the supervision of Professor Patrick Serruys, 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 a study about the assessment of neoatherosclerosis and its clinical impact in patients with restenosis (RIBS IV and V OCT substudy) and research regarding vessel injury and healing evaluation with different stent platforms evaluated with OCT (VISTA study). Dr Gonzalo is a dedicated educationalist with involvement in many areas of complex PCI, serving currently as Deputy Editor for Eurointervention and Committee Member of EuroPCR.

Dr Roberto Garbo is the Director of the CTO PCI, CHIP, and complex PCI program in Maria Pia Hospital GVM Care & Research, Turin, Italy. He was Head of the Cath Lab at San Giovanni Bosco Hospital from 2005-2020. He is the Director of the International Turin CTO & CHIP Live Congress. He has been Board member of EuroCTO Club from 2017 to 2023. Dr Garbo is one of the greatest experts in the world in the field of IVUS guided CTO in both antegrade and retrograde approach, with more than 2400 CTO of which more than 1100 retrograde CTO PCI. He performed as Live first operator more than 100 CTO PCI live cases during international CTO Congress . He is a Proctor for CTO PCI programs in Italy, Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Czech republic, Russia) and Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia), as well as an expert and proctor for Rotational Atherectomy in very calcified lesion (more than 1000 cases as first operator). He is also involved in many scientific projects with more than 130 papers in the field of CTO and Complex PCI.