International Speakers

Below are the international speakers from the 2024 event. International speakers for the 2025 event coming soon!

Dr Jamie McCabe

Dr. James (Jamie) McCabe received his medical degree from Yale University. He completed 10 years of post-medical school training at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. Dr. McCabe is currently the Section Chief of Interventional Cardiology and Medical Director of the Cardiac Cath Labs at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. He is a nationally recognized clinician educator and investigator in transcatheter therapies for valvular heart disease.

Dr Maurizio Taramasso

Specialist in cardiac surgery

Heart Valve Clinic, University Hospital of Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Specialist in cardiac surgery since 2014, Dr Maurizio Taramasso has completed his surgical training at the San Raffaele University Hospital in Milan, Italy. He has also done specific cross-training in interventional cardiology and heart valve transcatheter therapies (mitral and aortic) at the San Raffaele University Hospital. His main areas of interest include surgical and catheter treatments of valvular heart disease (transfemoral and transapical TAVI, MitraClip) and heart failure. He is author and co-author of numerous publications on this topic.

Dr Jacqueline Saw

Dr. Jacqueline Saw is an Interventional Cardiologist at Vancouver General Hospital and St Paul’s Hospital, Clinical Professor of Medicine at UBC, and Program Director of the UBC AFC Adult Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Program and the VGH Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Program. She served as the Head of VGH Cardiology Clinical Trials Research. She was awarded Canada Scholar and the Dean’s Entrance Scholarship for Natural Sciences at Simon Fraser University for her undergraduate degree. She obtained her medical doctorate at the University of Ottawa, graduating summa cum laude. She completed her Internal Medicine and Cardiology residencies at the University of British Columbia, and served as chief cardiology fellow. She then completed her Interventional Cardiology fellowship training at Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

Dr. Saw is an international key opinion leader in spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). She is the PI of the Canadian SCAD Study, Canadian SCAD Genetic Study, CanSCAD3000 Study, PRYME, NACAD, and SAFER-SCAD studies. She is a Michael Smith Foundation Health Research Professional Investigator for SCAD research. She is also a key opinion leader in left atrial appendage (LAA) closure, and is principal investigator of several LAA closure studies (ASAP-TOO, Canadian Watchman Registry, Canadian ACP/Amulet Registry). She is an active physician proctor for LAAC with WATCHMAN and ACP/Amulet devices.

She is the Chair for the SCAI Expert Consensus Statement on Transcatheter LAA Closure, Chair of Clinical Events Committee of the Amulet Post-Marketing Registry, and Co-Chair of the American Heart Association SCAD Scientific Statement Writing Committee. She is a writing group member of the EHRA EAPCI Expert Consensus Statement on Catheter-based LAA Occlusion, the SCAI Position Statement on Best Practices for Clinical Proctoring, and the SCAI Expert Consensus Statement on Sex-Specific Considerations in Myocardial Revascularization. She is a steering committee member of the NCDR LAAO Registry. She is also on the Program Development Committee of TCT, TVT, ACC and SCAI. She was an associate editor of JACC Cardiovascular Intervention.

She has authored over 290 peer-reviewed publications, including scientific research manuscripts, review papers, and book chapters, and is the primary editor of three textbooks on LAAC and carotid artery stenting. She has given over 800 scientific talks internationally.

Dr Michael J Reardon

Dr Michael J. Reardon holds the position of Clinical Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center and created the multi-institution, multidisciplinary cardiac tumor team with HMH and MDA. He has served as elected president of the medical staff for the HMH and received numerous awards including the Overstreet Award and Noon Award. He currently holds the Allison Family Distinguished Chair of Cardiovascular Research and divides his time between building innovative clinical, research and educational programs.

Professor Vinayak (Vinnie) Bapat

Prof. Bapat completed his medical education in Mumbai, India and then in Canada and UK. After completing Fellowship in Toronto General hospital in 1999, he moved to UK and completed Cardiothoracic training in UK and obtained FRCS.CTh in 2005. He was appointed as a consultant at the Guys and St. Thomas’ hospital in 2007 with special interest in aortic surgery.

He was the surgical lead for the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) program at St. Thomas’ Hospital, which is the largest TAVI program in UK and acts as a tertiary referral center for complex TAVI cases. He pioneered new methods of performing TAVI (trans-aortic approach), led the original research and guidance on valve-in-valve indication and has developed smartphone Apps, which are used all over the world as a reference tool for valve-in-valve. He also leads research in advance indications of TAVR such as MAC. Dr. Bapat has trained over 100 centers in TAVI all over the world and continues to participate actively in teaching and training on all aspects of TAVI.

He has been involved in early feasibility study of the Transcatheter mitral valve implantation and has performed first-in-man implant of Edward’s FORTIS device in February 2014 and also of Medtronic’s Intrepid device prior to its acquisition. He was the PI for the global feasibility trial investigating Intrepid device.

Similarly, he has led bench and clinical application of newer tricuspid replacement and repair devices such as Navigate, Intrepid and Tricinch. He is the national PI for Intrepid Tricuspid trial in USA.

Prof. Bapat has a large research and innovation program to help advance the field and has over 150 publications. He is an invited faculty for all major cardiology and cardiac surgical meeting. Prof. Bapat moved to Columbia University Medical Center in New York in 2017 and helped to start the advance Mitral and Tricuspid therapy. In June 2020 he accepted the appointment at the Abbott Northwestern Hospital and Minneapolis Heart Institution as Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Dr A B Gopalamurugan

Dr A B Gopalamurugan is well renowned internationally as a pioneering interventional cardiologist and electrophysiologist who was a London based consultant cardiologist for some years before moving to India to set up Transcatheter Valve services in India in 2015.

He started India’s first TAVR with the Evolut R valve platform in 2015 making that patient the longest living TAVR patient ever in India to date. He started India’s first Transcatheter Mitral Valve Replacement (TMVR) programme in 2016 making that patient the longest living TMVR patient in India to date. He went on to start India’s first Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve Replacement (TTVR) programme in 2016 and subsequently started 14 of India’s first Transcatheter heart valve treatments including India’s first Transcaval TAVR, India’s Basilica, India’s first Lampoon, India’s first Sesame, India’s first TMVR in MAC program and several others.

He has contributed to three of the world’s first TAVR procedures including the first-in-man successful

Transeptal TMVR (published in JACC) and he holds a Guinness world record in the field of TAVR. He is the founder and course director of India’s national Transcatheter Valve course/conference namely “India Valves” which is the largest attended Transcatheter valve event of the country. It is conducted in the first weekend of September every year. He currently works between Chennai, Mumbai and London where his private offices are based.

Dr Raj Makkar

Professor
Cedars-Sinai, Cardiology

Vice President, Cardiovascular Innovation and Intervention
Cedars-Sinai, Cardiology

Executive Director of Cardiac Interventional Services
Cedars-Sinai, Cardiology

Director, Interventional Cardiology
Cedars-Sinai, Cardiology

Co-Director of the Interventional Cardiology Research Program
Cedars-Sinai, Cardiology

Associate Director, Smidt Heart Institute for Interventional Technologies
Cedars-Sinai, Smidt Heart Institute

Stephen R. Corday, MD, Chair in Interventional Cardiology
Cedars-Sinai

Stephen R. Corday, MD, Chair in Interventional Cardiology (gift of Brindell and Milton Gottlieb)
Cedars-Sinai

BIO

Raj Makkar, MD is a world-renowned leading expert in interventional cardiology and is one of the most widely cited researchers on the management of valvular heart disease. He has performed the greatest number of transcatheter valve implantation (TAVI) procedures in the world and has led the field in advancing the procedure to ensure the best outcomes for patients. In 2020, he performed the most transcatheter mitral valve repair procedures with the MitraClip system in the United States and is the national principal investigator for mitral valve replacement research studies. He has authored over 500 manuscripts, abstracts and book chapters in peer-reviewed literature including practice-changing contributions in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He has lectured extensively around the world and regularly performs live case transmissions for major international conferences to demonstrate cutting-edge interventional cardiology techniques to a world-wide audience. His research interests focus on novel transcatheter therapies to treat structural heart disease, with a focus on studies that directly demonstrate improvements in patient outcomes. Since 2010, he has been the Stephen R. Corday Chair in Interventional Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai and has led the clinical program and trained over 50 fellows both from within the United States and internationally.

Dr Paul Mahoney

Paul Mahoney, MD, FACC, FSCAI

Professor of Medicine, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University

Section Chief, Interventional Cardiology, ECU Health

Director, Structural Heart, ECU Health

Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories, ECU Health

Associate Director, Interventional Fellowship Programs

Greenville, North Carolina

Dr. Mahoney is an experienced structural interventionalist who has performed over 4000 TAVR and 1000 mitral TEER procedures, as well as hundreds of TMVR and TTVR investigational devices. He is active in dozens of clinical trials and serves on multiple national steering and screening committees. He serves as Co-Chair of the Structural Heart Committee for SCAI, and has authored dozens of papers and book chapters. He has proctored internationally for multiple transcatheter procedures and techniques. He has a special interest in electrosurgery based procedures and best practices.