JIM 2021: Live Cases from Rotterdam

Prof Nicolas Maria Van Mieghem is an Interventional cardiologist at Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, NL decided to pursue a career that would help others. “I enjoy the feeling of being able to help someone or do something important for them". His father was a general cardiologist and one of his biggest influences early in his career.

Prof Van Mieghem initially intended to train as a cardiac surgeon but decided to specialise in interventional cardiology instead, following advice from a mentor. This decision was cemented when he read the first-in-human case report of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) in Circulation by Alain Cribier in 2002. Prof Van Mieghem believes that great cardiologist genuinely cares for their patients. He names Gary Roubin, Dr Manu Malbrain and Professor Patrick Serruys among his mentors. 

His current research focuses on cerebral embolic protection during TAVI and the search for improved large bore closure devices. He works actively in expanding TAVI indications, most notably TAVI as a means to further unload the left ventricle in heart failure patients with moderate aortic stenosis (the TAVR UNLOAD trial). Prof Van Mieghem is also involved in the development and dispersion of mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices as well as transcatheter mitral and tricuspid repair techniques. In terms of imaging and preprocedural planning, his research has covered computed tomography (CT)-derived 3D modelling and printing.

As well as his involvement in percutaneous coronary interventions and structural heart programs, he has published and co-authored over 350 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Professor Van Mieghem is a principal investigator and steering committee member in multiple ongoing international trials, evaluating various coronary and transcatheter valve technologies. He is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) and is currently Medical Director of the department of Interventional cardiology at the Thorax Centre.

 Prof Van Mieghem is on the ICR3 Editorial Board.

Dr Roberto Diletti is interventional cardiologist at the Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, in Rotterdam. He obtained the degree of PhD based upon his research in percutaneous coronary interventions. Dr Roberto Diletti has significant expertise in complex PCI and live cases. Dr Roberto Diletti has a particular interest in CTO education and in the implementation of new technologies and techniques. He is currently leading the clinical research on acute coronary syndromes and the CTO program at Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC.

Personal History

Dr Colombo was born in Busto Arsizio, Italy on June 17, 1950.⁷ After completing his schooling in Gallarate, he went on to the University of Milan School of Medicine in 1968, before attending the University of Parma Postgraduate School to study Cardiovascular Medicine. From a young age, he was a gifted student; and ultimately graduated Summa Cum Laude from his medical school.⁷

In 1967, Dr Colombo’s love of travel took him all the way to Iran in his Volkswagen (which he affectionately named “Maggiolino”).⁵ In 1986, he opened a private centre based on his innovative ideas after feeling ostracised by the academic environment.⁵ At the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session in 2012, Dr Colombo was dubbed a “Legend in Cardiovascular Disease.”²

He and his wife have two children.⁷

Dr Colombo is famous for his relentless work ethic, usually working 12 to 14 hour days, six days a week. He claims he is continuously reflecting on how to improve the quality of his work and philosophising about life. He has been quoted as saying, “Your best friend is the patient. Colleagues, administrators may praise you as long as you are successful, but they will be ready to put you down the first time you have a problem. When patients understand you do your best for them, they stick with you and support you forever.”⁵ 

Academic History¹

Dr Colombo earned his MD from the University of Milan School of Medicine in 1975 and studied Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Parma Postgraduate School. He completed his residency in Cardiology at The De Gasperis Cardio Center in Milan.

He did his Internship and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine in 1978 and 1980 respectively at the Cabrini Medical Center, New York. In 1982, he was made a Fellow in Cardiology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Long Beach, University of California, Irvine. He was also made Fellow in Invasive Cardiology at the Rev. Monsignor Joseph. B. Toomey Cardiovascular Laboratory and Research Department at St. Joseph's Hospital in 1984.

Career Overview

Dr Colombo is a Full Professor of Cardiology and Senior Consultant at Humanitas University in Milan.¹ He is also the Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at EMO GVM - Centro Cuore Columbus in Milan and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University in New York.¹ As an Attending Cardiologist at Stamford Hospital, Dr Colombo works closely with interventional cardiologists to provide patients with innovative procedures for structural heart conditions including TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) and MitraClip®.² In 1994, he was one of the first to use IVUS for stent deployment and to understand the importance of good stent expansion to avoid stent thrombosis.⁵

Dr Colombo now has 30 years of Interventional Cardiology experience alongside his research and teaching.⁴ He is on the editorial board of several major Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology Journals and has written over 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals.3 He has also contributed chapters to top Interventional Cardiology reference books and has written several books on the topic of coronary intervention. 

His Medical Licences include the Italian Licence in Medicine and Surgery (obtained in 1976), the New York State License (obtained in 1981) and the California State License (obtained in 1982). His Board Certifications include the Italian Board in Cardiology (1978), the American Board of Internal Medicine (1982), the American Board of Cardiovascular Diseases (1985) and the American Board of Interventional Cardiology (1999). 

Dr Colombo is an active member of multiple medical societies, including the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Medical Association. Currently, he is working as principal investigator on a national and international level, conducting multi-centred clinical trials and spontaneous single-centred clinical trials in Interventional Cardiology.⁸

Career Timeline⁷

• 1975 - 1978: Residency in Cardiology, The De Gasperis Cardio Center (Director Prof. F. Rovelli), Milan, Italy
• 1978 - 1979: Internship in Internal Medicine at Cabrini Medical Center of New York City
• 1979 - 1980: Residency in Internal Medicine at Cabrini Medical Center of New York City
• 1980 - 1982: Chief Residency in Internal Medicine at Cabrini Medical Center of New York City
• 1981 - 1982: Instructor in Medicine, New York Medical College
• 1982 - 1984: Fellow in Cardiology, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Long Beach, University of California Irvine, CA
• 1982 - 1988: Assistant Professor of Medicine University of California, Irvine 
• 1984 - 1985: Fellow in Invasive Cardiology, Monsignor Joseph. B. Toomey Cardiovascular Laboratory and Research Department at St. Joseph's Hospital (Director Dr G. Gensini), State University of New York
• 1995: Visiting Professor Cleveland Clinic Foundation
• 1996 - 2004: Professor of Clinical Medicine New York University, New York
• 1999 - 2018: Head of Hemodynamics, San Raffaele Hospital
• 2003: Visiting Professor, University of Belgrade, School of Medicine, Belgrade, Serbia
• 2014 - 2018: Member of the “Consiglio Superiore della Sanità’ (The Italian Superior Health Council)
• 2015 - 2018: Professor of Cardiology, Università Vita-Salute, Milan, Italy
• 1986 - Present: Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, EMO GVM Centro Cuore Columbus, Milan
• 2004 - Present: Visiting Assistant Professor of Medicine, Columbia University Hospital, New York 
• 2013 - Present: Attending Cardiologist, Stamford Medical Hospital, Stamford, Connecticut
• 2015 - Present: Attending Cardiologist, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, New York, NY
• 2021 - Present: Senior Consultant, Humanitas Research Hospital

Recognition^{1 5}

• 1981: Best Teaching Resident, Cabrini Medical Center, New York
• 1994: Best Clinical Researcher, Thoraxcenter Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• 1998: Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) Career Achievement Award
• 2005: Elite Reviewer, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC)
• 2010: Andreas Grüntzig Ethica Award, EuroPCR
• 2012: Elite Reviewer, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC)
• 2012: Legends of Cardiovascular (CV) Medicine Lecture Series, American College of Cardiology
• 2014: Master of the Masters, TCTAP Award 
• 2014: Chien Foundation Award for Outstanding Lectureship & Lifetime Achievement in PCI, CIT in partnership with TCT
• Noteworthy Cardiologist by Marquis Who's Who

Areas of Speciality⁴

• Interventional Cardiology
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Valvular Heart Disease
• Cross-Modality and Multi-Modality Imaging Topics

 
Sources

• https://www.hunimed.eu/member/antonio-colombo/ 
• https://www.stamfordhealth.org/about/newsroom/press-releases/2014/dr-antonio-colombo-joins-stamford-hospitals-new-structural-heart/ 
• https://www.emedevents.com/speaker-profile/antonio-colombo#moreTopics
• https://esc365.escardio.org/Person/2150-dr-colombo-antonio
• https://eurointervention.pcronline.com/article/ethica-award-2010-antonio-colombo
• https://www.summit-tctap.com/2014/program_award_master.htm 
• https://prabook.com/web/antonio.colombo/17208 
• https://www.cto-liveaid.com/antonio-colombo/ 
   

Dr Antonio Columbo is an editorial board member of Interventional Cardiology: Reviews, Research, Resources (ICR3).

Prof Eberhard Grube is Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Department of Cardiology and Angiology at University Hospital Bonn, Germany and Consulting Professor, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Prof Grube completed his medical training at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Bonn, Germany, before completing his cardiology training at the university of Wisconsin Medical School. He then went on to receive angiology training from the North Rhine Chamber of Medical Doctors. 

Prof Grube is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and the Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions. 

Dr Mohamed Azeem Latib is a world-leading expert in Interventional Cardiology. Dr Latib is the Section Head and Director of Interventional Cardiology as well as the Director of Structural Heart Interventions at the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care. 

He is an editorial board member of Interventional Cardiology: Reviews, Research, Resources (ICR3).

His focus is on complex coronary interventions as well as transcatheter aortic, mitral and tricuspid interventions. His main clinical interests include Complex Coronary Interventions, Structural Heart Disease and New Device Innovation. He has extensive clinical experience in TAVR and MitraClip, as well as expertise in novel and new devices to treat mitral and tricuspid valve disease minimally invasively without open-heart surgery.

Dr Latib is currently involved in the development of the NeoChord NeXuS Transcatheter Mitral Chordal Repair Device and procedure.

He has over 550 peer-reviewed journal articles to his name. He serves on the editorial board of many journals, including Cardiac Interventions Today, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Cardiovascular Interventions and Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine. He is a reviewer for many more journals and serves on the faculty of several international conferences.

Dr Latib is a member of several professional organisations, including the American College of Cardiology and the European Society of Cardiology.

Background

Dr Ghada Mikhail is a consultant interventional cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. She qualified from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, and was awarded an MD from the University of London. She trained at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust. She has gained international experience by spending a year in Italy, in a world renowned centre, on an interventional fellowship. Dr Mikhail has set up the valvular heart disease programme at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for the treatment of patients with valvular heart disease using percutaneous techniques and performs the transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) procedure. She is the research lead for the programme and is the founder and director of the annual Imperial valve and cardiovascular course (IVCC). She is actively involved in the area of cardiovascular disease in women and has founded the Her at Heart scientific initiative in the UK, the aims of which are to address the issues of under-diagnosis, under-treatment and under-representation of women in research trials. She has chaired symposia and presented at national and international meetings and is widely published on the same subject. She is a member of the British Cardiovascular Society working group for women's heart health and was involved in the European Society of Cardiology Women at Heart policy conference. She is on the Board of the WIN (Women in Innovations) initiative of the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions and also a board member of the European EAPCI women group. Dr Mikhail has given TV, press and radio interviews on the under-recognition of cardiovascular disease in women.

Expertise

General and interventional cardiology, coronary angiography and angioplasty, valvular heart disease - transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), cardiovascular disease in women, permanent pacemaker implantation

Research & publications

Coronary angioplasty, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), cardiovascular disease in women

Prof Carlo Di Mario was born in Modena, Italy and graduated in medicine, specialising in cardiology, from the University of Padua. He trained in interventional cardiology and worked at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he completed his PhD. He became professor of cardiology at the University of Florence and director of structural interventional cardiology at the Careggi University Hospital, Florence, Italy.

He has previously served as research and clinical director for interventional cardiology at the University Vita-Salute of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. Between January 2003 and November 2016, he was professor of clinical cardiology, NHLI, Imperial College of Sciences, Medicine and Technology, and consultant cardiologist of the Royal Brompton and Harefield Foundation Trust, London. He was appointed in 2010 as senior investigator of the National Institute of Health Research. He is a certified implanter for the Medtronic Evolut R, Edwards Sapien 3 transcatheter aortic valves. He has eight years of experience with MitraClips and started implants of CardioBand in 2017.

Prof Di Mario has served as secretary of the Working Group on Interventional Cardiology of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and was president of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions between 2009 and 2011. Between 2012 and 2014, he served as councillor of the ESC. He has been a member of the writing committee of many guidelines task forces of the ESC and is first/last author or co-author of many expert consensus documents.

Dr Carlos Di Mario is an editorial board member of Interventional Cardiology: Reviews, Research, Resources (ICR3) and European Cardiology Review.

Dr Moses 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. Dr. Moses is an Associate Director of the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference, the world’s largest interventional cardiology conference.

He serves on the Board of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York City; and he has made important contributions in the areas of clinical research and educational activities in interventional vascular therapy. 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.

Honors & Awards
Research Fellowship Award, Southern Pennsylvania Heart Assoc. 1978-1980
Member, PTCA Subcommittee NHLBI-Study of Thrombolysis in    
Acute Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) 1986-1987
Consultant: FDA Committee on Biologics 1986
Chairman: New York Angioplasty Society 1987-1988
Lectureship, Sendai Medical College, Tohoku Medical Society,
Sendai, Japan 1990
Lectureship, The Vivian & Norman Weiden Lecture:  Innovative
Approaches to Coronary Artery Disease 1996
New York Cardiological Society, NYC   
Listed in Best Doctors of the Year, New York Magazine 2004-2016
America’s Top Doctors –Castle Connolly 2005-2016
Lifetime Achievement Award, Cardiovascular Research Foundation 2006
C3 Lifetime Career Achievement Award-C3 Hall of Fame 2010