Simple Education Interventional Cardiology: Coronary Physiology Course (iFR, FFR, CFR, CT-FFR), March 2018, London

Dr Justin Davies is a consultant 
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). 

Prof Javier Escaned is Consultant Interventional Cardiologist / Associate Professor and Head of Section, Cardiology Department, Hospital Clinico San Carlos (Madrid, Spain). He trained as a cardiologist the United Kingdom (Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Birmingham and Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry) before moving to the Thoraxcenter / Rotterdam (The Netherlands), where he obtained his PhD degree in 1994. Author of more than 200 scientific articles, books and book chapters on different aspects of interventional cardiology, imaging and physiology, his latest contribution is the textbook “Coronary Stenosis. Imaging, Structure and Physiology”, co-edited with Patrick W Serruys. He is currently co-director or EuroPCR. Some of his additional interests are philosophy, education and music.

Dr Sayan Sen is a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist and
NIHR Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London. His research
interests are dedicated to improving patient care. As such, they
include the development and validation of new diagnostic tools,
determining how the design of comparative efficacy studies can
affect clinical use of competing therapies and the development
and application of tools that permit a more patient centered
approach to therapy. He studied Medicine at University College London (UCL), achieving a First Class (Honours) Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Sciences & Neuroscience in 2000 and graduated with distinction (Surgery) in his final MBBS Examinations in 2003. He trained as a junior doctor on the Hammersmith and UCL medical rotations prior to being appointed as a Cardiology Specialist Registrar in the North West London region in April 2006 and a NIHR clinical Lecturer in 2013. One of the themes of his research is to determine the need for potent vasodilators when assessing coronary stenosis severity. Working with Dr Justin Davies, Dr Sen’s PhD introduced and developed a new technique of stenosis evaluation (the instantaneous wave-free ratio, iFR). In addition to being the Principal Investigator of several first in man physiological studies, he was also the Medical Director of the DEFINE FLAIR trial – a global multi-centre randomized study that has recently demonstrated the non-inferiority of iFR to FFR for revascularisation decision-making in over 2500 patients. 

Dr Rasha Al-Lamee is an Interventional Cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, UK. Dr Al-Lamee’s research interests are complex coronary intervention, coronary physiology and invasive intravascular assessment. She is currently leading the ORBITA trial as part of a PhD programme under the supervision of Dr Justin Davies and Professor Darrel Francis. At Imperial College she is actively involved in the development and recruitment for a number of multi-centre clinical trials. Dr Al-Lamee has over 30 peer-reviewed publications and has presented at international Cardiology conferences worldwide throughout her clinical career. She studied at the University of Oxford and University College London. She went onto complete her training as a junior doctor on the Barts and the London Medical rotation before being appointed as a Specialist Registrar on the North West London Cardiology rotation in 2006. Dr Al-Lamee has eleven years of Cardiology experience and completed three years of Interventional Fellowship training at Hammersmith Hospital in London. She also spent one year training as an Interventional Fellow under the supervision of Professor Antonio Colombo in Milan. She completed specialist training in Cardiology in 2013.

Dr Christopher Cook is a Medical Research Council Clinical
Fellow at Imperial College London, undertaking a PhD in
coronary physiology under the supervision of Dr Justin Davies.
He studied Medicine at University College London (UCL) and
graduated with Distinction (Clinical Medicine and Clinical
Sciences) in his final MBBS Examinations in 2009. He achieved
a First Class (Honours) Bachelor of Science degree in
Physiology undertaking a period of research at The Hatter
Cardiovascular Institute. He was awarded ‘The Dean’s List’ for outstanding performance in the Faculty of Life Sciences. In total he was awarded 17 prizes including the prestigious Gold Medal Medicine (proxime accessit). In 2014, he was awarded the Imperial Valve and Cardiovascular Course Young Investigator Prize. In 2015 he was awarded the inaugural EuroPCR’s Got Talent Award. In 2017 he was elected onto the EuroPCR Clinical Programme Committee.

Dr Mauro Echavarría Pinto is an Interventional cardiologist and currently works at “ISSSTE“ General Hospital in Querétaro, México. He trained clinically in the National Institutes of Health, in Mexico City, and in Hospital Clínico San Carlos, in Madrid, Spain. He holds a MSc degree in Research Methodology, Design and Statistics in Health Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, because of his work at the Cardiology Department of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. He is an author of >50 peer-reviewed manuscripts mostly focused on the use of coronary physiology to guide the treatment of ischaemic heart disease. 

Dr Yousif Ahmad is a Clinical Research Fellow and Specialist Registrar in Interventional Cardiology at Imperial College London. After graduating with Honours and multiple distinctions from the University of Nottingham he combined his clinical training with research under the supervision of Professor Gregory Lip. He completed his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians and authored several publications on atrial fibrillation which have been cited by international guidelines.

He was subsequently appointed to the competitive and prestigious Academic Clinical Fellowship in Cardiology at Imperial College London in 2013 and completed an Interventional Fellowship in 2015. He is currently a Clinical Research Fellow with his research interests spanning all of adult interventional cardiology, with particular emphasis on coronary physiology and the improvement of patient outcomes through tailored therapy.

Prof Rajesh Kharbanda graduated BSc Medical Sciences (1st) in 1989, and MBChB from Edinburgh Medical School, Scotland in 1991. After training in Edinburgh and Glasgow, he commenced Specialist Cardiology Training in North West London in 1995. He completed his PhD in Clinical Cardiovascular Pharmacology at University College London in 2001. He was appointed British Heart Foundation Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge 2001-2004, and completed clinical and academic training at the Addenbrooke's and Papworth Hospitals. He held an Interventional Fellowship at Toronto General Hospital, University of Toronto 2004-2005. 

He was appointed Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust in 2006 and since 2007 at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University Hospitals. His clinical practice is general cardiology with a focus on coronary intervention and TAVI. He and has developed an established clinical research programme, focussing on coronary physiology, ischemia-reperfusion injury and cardio-protection. His main areas of ongoing research are on how to further optimise PCI outcomes in ACS with a focus on the microcirculation assessed by coronary physiology. The Oxford BRC, and the Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford support this work. He has published widely, including original research publications reviews and invited editorials. 

Juliet Nilsson is the Creative Director of Simple Education, the online cardiology educational platform aggregating content from key courses, global intuitions and leaders in the field of interventional cardiology. She received a Master’s in Art History with Honours from Edinburgh University before joining the Creative Development team at Lightyears, Stockholm in 1998. Juliet continued in creative development in Copenhagen for the trail blazing e-commerce bureau AHEAD, and then as International Creative Director for Caput Community Software Solutions. Following a role as Senior Consultant at Halcyon Gallery in London and Copenhagen, Juliet founded Vind & Våg Publishing House in 2013, a creative development agency. Juliet has published several books under her own imprint and is currently the founder & advisor to the Nordic Art Agency.

Dr Sukhjinder Nijjer is a Consultant Cardiologist with a specialist interest in Coronary Intervention and the treatment of coronary artery disease. He works at both Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Dr Nijjer is also an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College.

He has clinical research interests in coronary physiology and the treatment of acute coronary syndromes. He has a PhD awarded by Imperial College London in coronary blood flow and the use of stenting to treat complex stenoses. Clinically, he is specialises in interventional cardiology and he is skilled in coronary intervention and the application of coronary physiology and intravascular imaging. He has expertise in anti-platelets, optical coherence tomography and CT coronary angiography. He has specific research interests in coronary artery physiology and clinical trial design, and is working at the forefront of innovation in physiological assessment for coronary disease. He has presented his PhD research at the leading cardiology conferences around the world, including the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) and EuroPCR. He has won many awards and has over 70 high impact publications.

Dr Ricardo Petraco  is a NIHR Lecturer in Cardiology at Imperial College London, with a research interest in coronary physiology and interventional cardiology. He is also a Cardiology Specialist Registrar and Interventional Fellow at the Imperial College NHS Trust. After graduating in Brazil, he undertook his cardiology training in leading UK centres, including the Royal Brompton Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital and, currently, Hammersmith Hospital. He has been working with the coronary physiology group at Imperial since 2010 on the development of the novel instantaneous wave-Free Ratio (iFR). Dr Petraco’s work with iFR has led to the proposition of the Hybrid iFR-FFR approach and has established iFR’s close relationship with coronary flow reserve (CFR). Throughout his career, he has secured many research grants - CNPq grant for scientific initiation in Brazil (twice, 2000 and 2001); Imperial College Charity grant (2010); British Heart Foundation CRTF grant (2011) and Academy of Medical Sciences lecturer grant (2016) – and has published extensively in the field of coronary physiology. His interests in computer programming has led to the development of a software for automated analysis of coronary haemodynamics signals which is been used by many leading centres in the world. He has also proposed an algorithm for iFR calculation without the need for an ECG signal. His current research interests are on the development of methodologies to assess stenosis severity in situations of haemodynamic instability and on the understanding of how medical therapies modulate coronary resistance and flow. 

Prof Manesh Patel is the Chief of the Division of Cardiology
and the Division of Clinical Pharmacology. Dr Patel previously
served as the Director of Duke Cath Lab Research. His clinical
interests include diagnostic and interventional coronary
angiography, peripheral angiography and percutaneous
intervention. He is involved in several clinical trials involving
patients with vascular disease and in cardiac imaging. He is also a member of the American College of Cardiology Task Force for Appropriate use of Cardiovascular Procedures and is Chair of the American Heart Association Diagnostic and Interventional Cath Committee. Patel’s interest in cardiac imaging, quality of care, and cardiac devices is also evident in his research. His integration of these efforts into his roles at Duke was recognised in 2010 when he received the prestigious Duke Cardiology Fellowship Mentorship Award. In 2011, Dr Patel was named the endowed John Bush Simpson Assistant Professor of Cardiology. In 2013, Dr Patel took over the role of Director of Interventional Cardiology and the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories for the Duke University Health System with the goal of integrating patient-centered invasive care across the health system. Dr Patel has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in high impact journals, several reviews and over 20 editorials. Most recently, his articles in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Journal of the American Medical Association, and the New England Journal of Medicine garnered national attention from the scientific and lay press. Patel received his medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine in 1997. He completed his residency at Duke in 2000, followed by fellowships in cardiology and interventional cardiology at Duke University.