OPCI 2019

Ajay J. Kirtane, MD, SM, is a Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Kirtane is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California – San Francisco. Dr. Kirtane is a practicing Cardiologist with an interest in coronary and peripheral intervention and assumed the directorship of the NYP/Columbia cardiac catheterization laboratories in 2015. In addition to his clinical commitments at CUMC, Dr. Kirtane has a strong interest in clinical education and research, serving as Chief Academic Officer of the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy. On the national and international level, he is a co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation’s Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics meeting, has served as a director of several international, national, and regional educational meetings, and has participated on the program committees for the scientific sessions of both the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association. Dr. Kirtane’s research interests are in clinical trial methodology and outcomes of device-based and pharmacologic interventions in Interventional Cardiology. He has authored/co-authored >150 original manuscripts and >50 reviews and chapters including the “Coronary Stenting” chapters of the two most widely used textbooks in Interventional Cardiology.

Dr.Akiko Maehara is a Professor at Columbia University Medical Center and work as a Director of Intravascualr Imaging and MRI Core Laboratories at Cardiovascular Research Foundation In New York. She is an expert of intravascular imging (Intraascular ultrasound, Optical coherence tomography, Infrared spectroscopy) to detect vulnerable plauqe and optimize PCI.

Allen Jeremias, MD, MSc, is the Director of Interventional Cardiology Research and Associate Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York. He is also a member of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York City where he currently serves as the Director of the Physiology Core Laboratory. He completed his medical training at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Harvard Medical School. He has been a high volume interventional cardiologist since 2006 and recognized as a Top Doctor in the New York Metro Area by Castle Connolly. Dr. Jeremias has significantly contributed to advancing the field of interventional cardiology and he is considered one of the foremost authorities in coronary physiology and intravascular imaging. He is a co-director of the annual St. Francis Intravascular Imaging and Coronary Physiology Workshop, teaching physicians around the world on “Precision Angioplasty”. Dr. Jeremias is presently engaged in a major global study that could change the path of treating clogged arteries. Known as the ILUMIEN IV trial, this major clinical study is evaluating Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to guide coronary stent placement. He is also the principal investigator of DEFINE PCI, an international study on assessing the improvement in blood flow after stent placement for severe coronary blockages.

Arnold Seto MD MPA is the Director of Interventional Cardiology Research at University of California, Irvine and Cath Lab Director at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He was an active participant in the DEFINE-FLAIR and DEFINE-PCI trials, and a steering committee member for DEFINE-PCI. He has published multiple manuscripts in coronary artery disease, coronary physiology, and vascular access especially in the areas of accurate measurement of FFR and ultrasound guidance for radial and femoral access.

Dr. Bruce Samuels is an interventional cardiologist on staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC) in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Samuels completed his medical studies at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before returning to Southern California to complete his residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. At CSMC, he trained in both general and interventional cardiology before joining the medical staff there. In addition to his clinical practice in coronary intervention, Dr. Samuels has actively participated in numerous interventional trials including IVUS guided therapy, coronary physiology and microvascular disease. He is also working closely with the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center based at CSMC, working as an interventionalist in the active coronary reactivity research there. As co-chair of a 30-day readmissions task force, he has helped to shape policy for CSMC in its efforts to improve quality delivery of care. He has frequently been invited as faculty to many scientific meetings and is a sought after speaker for numerous peer educational platforms. Dr. Samuels is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Interventional Cardiology. He is married with three sons; his outside interests include contemporary art and long distance running.

Director of Rescue the Heart Program, Director CTO, and Advanced Coronary Therapeutics, Morristown Medical Center Dimitrios Karmpaliotis, MD, PhD, FACC, FSCAI is Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Rescue and Recovery Program and the Advanced Coronary Therapeutics and Chronic Total Occlusions Program at Morristown Medical Center. Dr. Karmpaliotis was formerly at the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy at Columbia University Medical Center, where he provided world-class care since 2014. He is a former associate professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical School and formerly served as director of the Chronic Total Occlusions, Complex and High-Risk Angioplasty Program at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

Dr. William Fearon graduated from Dartmouth College and received his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He completed an Internal Medicine residency at Stanford University Medical Center serving an extra year as a Medical Chief Resident. He completed a General Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology fellowship at Stanford, spending his third year as the Chief Cardiology Fellow. He is currently a Professor of Cardiology and Director of Interventional Cardiology at Stanford University School of Mediciner. Dr. Fearon is board certified in cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology, and he is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Dr. Fearon’s primary area of research interest is in coronary physiology. He was the US principal investigator and senior author of the FAME trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and was a co-principal investigator and senior author of the FAME 2 trial, also published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He is now the principal investigator of the international FAME 3 trial comparing bypass surgery to fractional flow reserve guided percutaneous coronary intervention. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, JACC Cardiovascular Interventions, and Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions. He was the principal investigator on an R01 and is the PI on an R61/R33 NIH award evaluating cardiac allograft vasculopathy early after transplantation. Dr. Fearon’s clinical activities include not only percutaneous coronary intervention, but also transcatheter aortic valve replacement. He was a coauthor on the PARTNER 2A Trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Emmanouil S. Brilakis, MD, PhD, FACC, FAHA, FESC, FSCAI is Director of the Center for Complex Coronary Interventions at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Chairman of the Center for Coronary Artery Disease at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. After graduating from Lycee Leonin de Patissia, Dr. Brilakis received his medical degree from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He trained in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases and Interventional Cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. He also completed a Masters in Clinical Research at the Mayo Clinic and a PhD in Clinical Research at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He served as director of the cardiac catheterization laboratories at VA North Texas Health Care System from 2004-2016. He was on the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School from 2004-2018. Dr. Brilakis leads a large clinical trial group investigating treatment of chronic total occlusions, prevention and treatment of saphenous vein graft disease, prevention and management of complications, intracoronary imaging, antiplatelet treatment optimization post coronary stenting, radiation safety in the catheterization laboratory, and implementation of novel technologies in healthcare. Dr. Brilakis has authored or co-authored over 600 manuscripts and has written the Manual of CTO Interventions, now in its second edition. He directs the Complex Coronary Interventions Webcast series and is on the Board of the Cardiovascular Innovations Foundation. He is an associate editor for Circulation and an editorial board member and reviewer for several journals and grant agencies. He is lecturing and proctoring at several institutions in the United States and abroad.

Prof Erick Schampaert is a Professor of Medicine, University of Montreal. He has been Interventional cardiologist, Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur de Montreal, since 1997, serving as Head of Division of Cardiology since 2006; Chair, CIUSSS NIM HSCM Cardiovascular Health Program since 2014 and Director of Clinical CV Research unit since 2001. Prof Schampaert’s research is focused mainly on Left Main PCI, Coronary physiology (FFR, iFR, CFR), Coronary imaging (IVUS and OCT), and ACS (STEMI) and platelet functions. Prof Schampaert is a Local PI for more than 75 clinical trials and is an author or co-author of more than 75 manuscripts in journals such as NEJM, Lancet, Circulation, JACC, EHJ.

Dr. Evan Shlofmitz is an Interventional Cardiologist and the Director of Intravascular Imaging at St. Francis Hospital - The Heart Center in Roslyn, NY. He completed a fellowship in Interventional Cardiology at Georgetown University/MedStar Washington Hospital Center. He previously completed an Intravascular Imaging and Physiology fellowship at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), a Cardiovascular Disease fellowship at Northwell Health and served as Chief Resident for Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian Queens. He serves on SCAI's IHD Council and is a co-director of Optimizing PCI (OPCI). His research interests have centered on intravascular imaging, the treatment of calcified coronary artery disease, in-stent restenosis and the optimization of stent implantation, with more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Gary S. Mintz, MD, is a Senior Medical Advisor at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF, New York, NY) and a Director of Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT). He is the author of more than 1000 peer reviewed articles, 60 book chapters, 4 books, and 850 abstracts concerning various aspects of clinical cardiology, cardiac ultrasound, hemodynamics, cardiac radiology and coronary arteriography, interventional cardiology, and (especially) intravascular imaging and physiology. In 2005, Dr. Mintz published his single-authored textbook Intracoronary Ultrasound that has now been translated into Chinese. In 2014, Dr. Mintz received the Master of the Masters Career Achievement Award at the TCTAP-Cardiovascular Summit in Seoul, Korea; in 2015 Dr. Mintz received the Chien Foundation Outstanding Lectureship & Lifetime Achievement Award, also presented at TCTAP-Cardiovascular Summit in Seoul, Korea; in 2017 Dr. Mintz received the Outstanding Achievement Award at CBS 2017, Nanjing, China; in 2018 Dr. Mintz received the Career Achievement Award at NFIC in Krakow, Poland; and in 2020 Dr. Mintz received the Jiangsu Friendship Award from the People’s Government of Jiangsu Province, China, the highest award presented to a non-Chinese. He also serves as a Senior Scientist and Advisor at the Medstar Cardiovascular Research Network, Washington, DC. Dr. Mintz completed his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 and received his medical degree from Hahnemann University (now part of Drexel University), in 1974, both in Philadelphia, PA. He finished his internship in 1975, residency in 1976, and cardiology fellowship in 1978, each at Hahnemann University. He joined the Hahnemann University Department of Medicine faculty in 1978 and was ultimately promoted to Professor of Medicine in 1987 before joining CRF in 1991. His past appointments at CRF have included Chief Medical Officer and Editor-in-Chief (and one of the founders) of TCTMD.com.

Dr Habib Samady is an interventional cardiologist and serves as President of the Georgia Heart Institute, the heart and vascular program of Northeast Georgia Health System. He is also Director of the Georgia Center for Cardiovascular Biomechanics and Modeling and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Emory University. Dr Samady is recognized as one of the foremost international experts in coronary physiology. He earned his medical degree from the University of Sheffield in England, and completed his residency training in both London and in Sheffield. He subsequently completed an internal medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Connecticut, before his fellowship in general cardiology, nuclear cardiology, and interventional cardiology at Yale University in Connecticut.

Hector M. Garcia-Garcia, MD, PhD, is now serving as an attending cardiologist for MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute and director of the Coronary Invasive Imaging Core Lab. Prior to joining the MHVI medical staff, Dr. Garcia-Garcia served as Director of the Core Lab of Invasive Imaging at Cardialysis—a leading cardiology clinical research organization—and as researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Inselspital in Bern, Switzerland. He received both a Master’s and Doctorate degree from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. An accomplished researcher, Dr. Garcia-Garcia has widely published in many international medical journals (more than 530 publications - H-index of 61), authored book chapters in most renowned cardiovascular textbooks and has presented at cardiology conferences world-wide. He is an expert in innovative cardiovascular technology. He has mentored seven PhD students and published their thesis.

Hiram Bezerra, MD, PhD, is Director, Cardiovascular Imaging Core Laboratory as well as Director, Director, Advanced Coronary and MCS at University Hospital Cleveland Medical Center. He is also an Associate Professor, Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Previously, he served at Massachusetts General Hospital with extensive expertise in Cardiac Imaging, Interventional Cardiology, Optical Coherence Tomography and Computed Tomography.

Jane Cao, MD, MPH, FACC, is St. Francis Hospital’s Director of Research and Cardiac Imaging. She is a nationally renowned cardiac imaging specialist and researcher. Dr. Cao received her degree from the Medical College of Fudan Uni­versity in Shanghai, and completed her Residency in Internal Medicine and Fellowship in Cardiology at the University of Vermont. She earned a Master’s Degree in Biology at Smith College in Massachusetts, and an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to coming to St. Francis, Dr. Cao was a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. She has lectured extensively in both the U.S. and China on cardiac CT and MRI.

An internationally recognized interventional cardiologist, Dr. Moses has performed more than 15,000 interventional procedures, authored over 600 publications, and served as lead investigator for numerous national and international clinical studies that have demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of coronary stent placement. In 2002, Dr. Moses was the lead investigator on a large clinical trial, the first in the U.S. that demonstrated the enormous benefit that led to FDA approval of the first drug-coated stent now used in the majority of interventional procedures in the U.S. Most recently in on the Executive Committee of PARTNER trial; they brought the first transcatheter aortic valve to clinical use in the U.S. He currently serves as Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Therapeutics at Columbia University Medical Center and as Director of Advanced Cardiac Interventions at St Francis Hospital and Heart Center in Roslyn, NY. He is also a pioneer in developing approaches involving minimally invasive surgery, angioplasty, gene therapy, novel imaging technologies and various support devices that allow for wider application of interventional cardiovascular procedures.

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).

Manesh Patel is the Chief of the Division of Cardiology and the Division of Clinical Pharmacology. His clinical interests include diagnostic and interventional coronary angiography, peripheral angiography and endovascular intervention. His is involved in several clinical trials involving patients with cardiovascular disease and in cardiac imaging. He is also the Chair of the American College of Cardiology Task Force for Appropriate Use Criteria for Cardiovascular Procedures and is Chair of the American Heart Association Diagnostic and Interventional Cath Committee. Patel's interest in cardiac imaging, quality of care, cardiac devices is also evident in his research. His integration of these efforts into his roles at Duke was recognized in 2010 when he received the prestigious Duke Cardiology Fellowship Mentor Award. In 2011, Dr. Patel was named the endowed John Bush Simpson Assistant Professor of Cardiology. In 2013, Dr. Patel received the Robert M. Califf Faculty clinical research Award. Currently, Dr. Patel is leading an effort to redesign the delivery of care to patients undergoing invasive catheterization procedures in the health system with a specific aim of measure and providing individualized, patient centered, innovative, and efficient care.

Matthew Price, MD, is Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and a member of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at Scripps Clinic, in La Jolla, California. Dr Price earned his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the UCLA Center for Health Sciences. He subsequently completed a fellowship in Cardiovascular Diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he held the position of Chief Fellow. Dr Price completed his training in interventional cardiology at Scripps Clinic, in La Jolla, California. Dr Price’s clinical and research focus includes interventional approaches to structural heart and coronary disease. He has led several clinical trials in PCI, and currently serves on the Steering and/or Executive committee of clinical trials evaluating antiplatelet therapy, novel drug-eluting stents, intravascular imaging, and left atrial appendage closure. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the ACC NCDR Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion (LAAO) registry. He has been twice awarded the Scripps Clinic Chairman’s Award for Research in Medicine. Dr Price serves as Editor-in-Chief of Interventional Cardiology Clinics and is a Section Editor for the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, He has authored or co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the European Heart Journal, Circulation, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He is also Editor of the seminal text-book, “Coronary Stenting”.

Dr. Michael S. Lee, is an interventional cardiologist, Associate Professor of Medicine and the Associate Director of Interventional Cardiology Research at the UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Lee has published over 110 (over 70 of which were as first author) peer reviewed articles and chapters. He has also published on topics including antithrombotic therapy in patients with acute coronary syndrome and in percutaneous coronary intervention, protocols to establish heparin dosing regimens, and percutaneous coronary intervention for the treatment of left main disease, saphenous vein grafts, and cardiac allograft vasculopathy who have undergone orthotopic heart transplantation. He is one of the world’s authorities in coronary and peripheral orbital atherectomy.

Paul J. Lee, M.D., earned his medical degree at SUNY Buffalo in 1994. He completed his residency at Montefiore Medical Center continuing at North Shore-Long Island Jewish, then completed his Interventional Cardiology Fellowship in 2002. He joined South Bay Cardiovascular in 2002, performing cardiac interventions at Good Samaritan and Southside Hospitals. In 2009, South Bay Cardiovascular affiliated with St. Francis Hospital, becoming one of the largest and most respected cardiovascular practices in the region. Dr. Lee specializes in treatment of complex coronary artery disease and peripheral vascular disease and TAVR procedures.

Paul Teirstein, MD, is the Chief of Cardiology and Director of Interventional Cardiology for Scripps Clinic and Director of the Scripps Prebys Cardiovascular Institute for Scripps Health. With a primary focus on complex coronary interventions and new technology development, Dr. Teirstein has played an active role in the initial development and clinical investigation of coronary stent procedures, rotablator atherectomy, coronary angioscopy and the utilization of cardiopulmonary support. Dr. Teirstein pioneered the first effective treatment for restenosis (low dose radiation therapy) and was one of the early investigators of medicated and bioabsorbable stents. Recent areas of investigation include new technology for minimally invasive transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Dr. Teirstein currently performs in excess of 800 stent procedures per year and maintains an active clinical research and teaching unit at Scripps Clinic where he strives to offer patients the most advanced cardiovascular care available worldwide.

Dr Richard A. Shlofmitz, MD, FACC is the Chairman of Cardiology at St. Francis Hospital, The Heart Center®, in Roslyn, New York. A pioneer in interventional cardiology, Dr. Shlofmitz has worked to advance the field, with a focus on optimizing outcomes with the development of Precision PCI. He is a founding co-director of the annual Intravascular Imaging and Coronary Physiology Workshop. Performing over 1,000 coronary interventions annually, he has one of the largest volumes of experience in PCI. He has the most clinical experience with orbital atherectomy and OCT world-wide. His clinical research interests focus on optimizing coronary interventions and he serves on multiple scientific advisory boards and clinical trial steering committees to further this mission. Dr Shlofmitz has been one of the largest enrollers for multiple clinical trials, including TWILIGHT, ILUMIEN III, and Onyx, with more than 75 publications in peer-reviewed journals and was first to perform coronary intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) in North America as part of the DISRUPT CAD III trial.

Ron Waksman, MD, FACC, Associate Director, Division of Cardiology, MedStar Washington Hospital Center (MWHC) and Director of Cardiovascular Research and Advanced Education for the MedStar Heart and Vascular Institute at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center. With nearly 20 years of experience in leading edge medical technologies, Dr. Waksman is a world-renowned interventional cardiologist and is a highly sought after Principal Investigator for pre-clinical and clinical studies conducted in the United States and abroad. Dr Waksman has performed over 5000 coronary interventions throughout his career.

A consultant cardiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, USA. Features in 13 videos on Wondr Medical. Roxana Mehran generally speaks on Anti-Platelet Drugs , Coronary Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS), Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, and Cardiac Valves.

Dr. Rao is Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, and the Section Chief of Cardiology at the Durham VA Medical Center. At the national level, Dr. Rao serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Circulation Cardiovascular Interventions, the interventional journal of the American Heart Association’s flagship Circulation family of journals. He is the President-Elect for The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and serves on the program committees of the ACC Scientific Sessions, the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference, and the SCAI Scientific Sessions. He was the chairman of the 2017 ACC-i2 Summit and was the chair of the SCAI 2019 Annual Scientific Session. In addition, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the ACC CathSAP 5 program and is currently the co-chair of the ACC Collaborative Management Pathway for Interventional Cardiology. His main research interests are pharmacological and interventional therapies for acute coronary syndromes, as well as bleeding and blood transfusion complications among patients with ischemic heart disease. Dr. Rao has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, and is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the seminal textbook on transradial procedures titled “Best Practices for Transradial Approach in Diagnostic Angiography and Intervention.”

Ziad Ali is the Director of the DeMatteis Cardiovascular Institute, Director of Investigational Interventional Cardiology, and Director of Cardio-nephrology at St Francis Hospital & Heart Center in New York. He is also Director of the Angiographic Core Laboratory at Cardiovascular Research Foundation and Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. His clinical research interests focus on the use of intravascular imaging and physiology technologies such as optical coherence tomography, intravascular ultrasound, and flow wire assessment to optimize coronary interventions, for which he has served as a Global principal investigator on a number of trials. Dr. Ali is also a recognized innovator, playing an integral role in the development of the Resting Full-Cycle Ratio (RFR) and Shockwave intravascular lithotripsy. Clinically Dr. Ali developed pioneering techniques to perform vascular interventions without contrast administration, including IVUS-guided zero-contrast PCI and OCT using saline flush media, protecting patients with advanced kidney disease from acute kidney injury and the need for dialysis.