Optimal CTO 2019

A consultant cardiologist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and University of Missouri Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Features in 3 videos on Wondr Medical. Aaron Grantham generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PPCI), and Live Cases.

A consultant cardiologist at Mater Private Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. Features in 20 videos on Wondr Medical. Colm Hanratty generally speaks on Fractional Flow Reserve (FFR), Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS), Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Calcium Scoring, and Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).

An industry at Boston Scientific, Natick, Massachusetts, USA. Features in 5 videos on Wondr Medical. Craig Thompson generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Coronary Interventions, Covid-19, Covid19 Webinars and Discussions, and Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).

An interventional cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, UK. Features in 9 videos on Wondr Medical. Elliot Smith generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Live Cases, and Coronary Angiograpy.

Prof Farrel Hellig is the Cathlab Director at Sunninghill Hospital (Johannesburg, South Africa) and Hon Professor of Cardiology at the University of Cape Town. He is involved in both the coronary and structural cardiac fields as well as peripheral interventions. Sunninghill Hospital is a referral centre for complex medical problems. In the coronary arena, his main interests are: complex multivessel disease, left main intervention, rotational atherectomy and chronic total occlusion. He has been active in the field of coronary physiology and imaging. He has many educational roles, including: director of Africa PCR, numerous presentations and live case transmissions to multiple international congresses and is a proctor for many different procedures. He has numerous publications, editorials and book chapters, and is on the editorial board of Eurointervention journal. In his spare time he plays saxophone, collects wine, cooks, and builds and flys model aircraft.

An interventional cardiologist at Lund University Hospital, Lund, Sweden. Features in 5 videos on Wondr Medical. Goran Olivecrona generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Covid-19, Impella, Cardiogenic Shock, and Cardiogenic Shock (Treatment).

James Spratt Professor of Interventional cardiology with a sub-speciality interest in complex PCI, intravascular imaging and CTO. He is widely published within this area and has performed live case demonstrations globally. He has an interest in medical education and is the Founder of Optima Education.

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.

Works at ZOL, Genk, Belgium. Features in 1 video on Wondr Medical. Jo Dens generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO).

Consultant Interventional Cardiologist and Revascularisation Group Chair at Royal Brompton Hospital, London. His clinical focus is on use of intravascular imaging in complex PCI , CTO and cardiogenic shock. His clinical research interests focus on optical coherence tomography, calcific coronary disease and percutaneous ventricular support. Dr Hill was global co-chief investigator for the DISRUPT CAD III study and has served as UK principal investigator for multiple interventional trials. He has served as a CTO and complex PCI proctor on a global basis and works closely with OPTIMA to focus on the development of OPTIMAL PCI. He is the founding co-director of the Complete Revascularisation (CoRe) meetings held every year in London.

After training in Scotland, Interventional Cardiology Fellowship at CUMC, and Clinical Research Fellowship at Harvard University, she was a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital and Associate Professor of Cardiology at the University of Glasgow, prior to moving back to New York in 2022.

Michael Wyman is an interventional cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

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.

A consultant cardiologist at VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Features in 4 videos on Wondr Medical. Paul Knaapen generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), CT Coronary Angiography, and Coronary Interventions.

An interventional cardiologist at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, Liverpool, UK. Features in 4 videos on Wondr Medical. Rod Stables generally speaks on Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO), Coronary Interventions, Anti-Platelet Drugs , and Drug Eluting Stents (DES).

Dr Simon Walsh has been working as a Consultant Cardiologist at the Belfast Trust for over 10 years. It is one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK. The centre performs ~2750 PCI per year, with 650-700 STEMI and calcium modification in ~10% of our PCI cases. Dr Walsh also works internationally as an educator, teaching advanced techniques for complex PCI and CTO PCI. This involves training visiting Cardiologists in Belfast retrograde CTO techniques, antegrade dissection and re-entry CTO techniques and other advanced PCI procedures. He has visited multiple centres in the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and North America to act as a visiting proctor for complex PCI and CTO PCI cases. Dr Walsh’s research interests include PCI, coronary artery disease, defibrillation, acute coronary syndromes and chronic total occlusions. Research responsibilities have included acting as a recruiting investigator for the >25 multicentre studies over the last 17 years. He acted as a primary investigator for numerous international trials including the Evolve, Noble, Leaders Free and Ischemia multicentre studies. He has been the lead UK investigator for the October trial, Syntax 2, Recharge and Ischaemia-CTO. He is also the Chief Investigator for the Consistent CTO, Celtic Bifurcation and Discrete CTO trials.

Dr Stéphane Rinfret is an academic interventional cardiologist and world-renown expert in chronic total occlusion (CTO) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). He was appointed chief of interventional cardiology at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and associate professor of medicine at McGill University in 2016 where he built a very active chronic total occlusion (CTO) and Complex Higher-risk but Indicated Procedures (CHIP) program. He has now moved to the US to work with at Emory Healthcare and Emory University, as associate-director of complex PCI and full professor (acting) of Medicine, to pursue his academic career and busy clinical practice, mostly at Emory Saint Joseph's Hospital, the oldest hospital of Atlanta serving a very large population. Dr Rinfret has held several peer-reviewed grants, published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, several abstracts, and has been invited over 300 times to give lectures in the last 10 years. His epidemiological research focuses on health services and outcomes. He is also a high-volume and world-renown coronary operator, performing over 400 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) per year, mostly from the transradial approach and most with complex anatomies. Dr Rinfret was one of the Canadian pioneers in CTO PCI and has contributed to expand access to the technique in Canada and all around the world through sharing his expertise. He is the lead editor of a textbook on CTO PCI published by Springer in 2015, currently being reviewed for a second edition. He has performed over 1200 CTO PCIs since January 2010, one of the largest volumes in the world, including a large number of retrograde procedures, and pursues a very active teaching program of transradial and CTO PCI techniques in Canada and Europe.

Wijnand Stuijfzand is a cardiology at Weill Medical College of Cornell Univeristy, New York, NY, USA.

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.