Simple Education - Advances in Coronary Physiology - June 2017

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.

Carlo Di Mario is Professor of Cardiology at the University of Florence and Director of the Structural 
Interventional Cardiology Division of the University Hospital Careggi, Florence, Italy. Previous posts included 15 years as Professor of Clinical Cardiology at Imperial College of Sciences, Medicine & Technology, London and Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital. Despite his teaching, research and administrative commitments, he maintains an active clinical involvement performing more than 100 PCI per year with special interest in the treatment of calcified lesions, chronic total occlusions, bifurcations, and diffuse disease. He is a regular TAVI operator and certified implanter for the Medtronic Evolut R and Edwards Sapien 3 transcatheter aortic valves. He participated in more than 160 MitraClip implantations in London and Florence and has recently started direct annuloplasty with the CardioBand. Professor Di Mario pioneered the use of intracoronary Doppler, pressure measurement, intravascular ultrasound, optical coherence tomography, and near infrared spectroscopy. He was PI of the OPTICUS trial, failing to demonstrate superiority of IVUS guided stenting, and of the Lipid Rich Plaque study, due to report at TCT 2018. He was Principal Investigator of the DESTINI trial, using Doppler CRF to identify lesions in need of stenting, and of the CARESS in AMI trial, a large multicentre trial showing that patients who receive fibrinolytic therapy for ST-elevation myocardial infarction benefit from early angioplasty. This trial and a subsequent meta-analysis have led to a change in the European Society of Cardiology and AHA/ACC Guidelines for treatment of STEMI patients. He cooperated with Dr Davies to the validation of iFR to assess lesion severity and discriminate the contribution of individual lesions, and with Dr Lyon in the intracoronary delivery of SERCA-2 genes via adenoviral vectors in the CUPID2 trial.

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 >700 indexed scientific articles on interventional cardiology, imaging and physiology (h-index 100) 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 board member of Monaco Cardio at the Princess Grace Hospital, Monaco, and an interventional cardiologist with over 15 years of experience as a leading educator in the field. His clinical and academic career was established at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London, where he built an international reputation for innovation in cardiovascular medicine. Over the course of his career, he has successfully mentored 15 PhD students, published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers — including landmark studies in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet — and holds 20 patents in cardiovascular medicine and technology. He was the co-principal investigator of the DEFINE-FLAIR study, which helped establish iFR (Instantaneous Wave-Free Ratio), a diagnostic technique he invented, as a globally adopted standard in coronary physiology. His work reflects a unique blend of scientific innovation, academic leadership, and clinical excellence. In addition to his research and academic commitments, Justin is CEO of Cerebria AI, where he leads the development of next-generation AI-powered cardiovascular imaging and physiology tools. Under his leadership, Cerebria AI is advancing cutting-edge solutions that integrate artificial intelligence with frontline cardiology to enhance clinical decision-making and patient outcomes. Combining deep clinical expertise with entrepreneurial vision, he continues to guide international ventures through funding, regulatory pathways, and commercialization, while remaining committed to transforming cardiovascular care on a global scale.