Coronary artery disease (CAD), also called coronary heart disease (CHD), ischemic heart disease (IHD), myocardial ischemia, or simply heart disease, involves the reduction of blood flow to the cardiac muscle due to build-up of atherosclerotic plaque in the arteries of the heart. It is the most common of the cardiovascular diseases. Types include stable angina, unstable angina, and myocardial infarction.
Interventional cardiology is a branch of cardiology that deals specifically with the catheter based treatment of structural heart diseases. Andreas Gruentzig is considered the father of interventional cardiology after the development of angioplasty by interventional radiologist Charles Dotter.
The University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) (French: Institut de cardiologie de l'Université d'Ottawa ) is Canada's largest cardiovascular health centre. It is located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It began as a department in The Ottawa Hospital, and since has evolved into Canada's only complete cardiac centre, encompassing prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, research, and education.
Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a syndrome due to decreased blood flow in the coronary arteries such that part of the heart muscle is unable to function properly or dies. The most common symptom is centrally located pressure-like chest pain, often radiating to the left shoulder or angle of the jaw, and associated with nausea and sweating. Many people with acute coronary syndromes present with symptoms other than chest pain, particularly women, older people, and people with diabetes mellitus.
Aortic valvuloplasty, also known as balloon aortic valvuloplasty (BAV), is a procedure used to improve blood flow through the aortic valve in conditions that cause aortic stenosis, or narrowing of the aortic valve. It can be performed in various patient populations including fetuses, newborns, children, adults, and pregnant women. The procedure involves using a balloon catheter to dilate the narrowed aortic valve by inflating the balloon.
Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is a minimally invasive non-surgical procedure used to treat narrowing of the coronary arteries of the heart found in coronary artery disease. The procedure is used to place and deploy coronary stents, a permanent wire-meshed tube, to open narrowed coronary arteries. PCI is considered 'non-surgical' as it uses a small hole in a peripheral artery (leg/arm) to gain access to the arterial system, an equivalent surgical procedure would involve the opening of the chest wall to gain access to the heart area. The term 'coronary angioplasty with stent' is synonymous with PCI. The procedure visualises the blood vessels via fluoroscopic imaging and contrast dyes. PCI is performed by an interventional cardiologists in a catheterization laboratory setting.
P2Y12 is a chemoreceptor for adenosine diphosphate (ADP) that belongs to the Gi class of a group of G protein-coupled (GPCR) purinergic receptors. This P2Y receptor family has several receptor subtypes with different pharmacological selectivity, which overlaps in some cases, for various adenosine and uridine nucleotides. The P2Y12 receptor is involved in platelet aggregation and is thus a biological target for the treatment of thromboembolisms and other clotting disorders. Two transcript variants encoding the same isoform have been identified for this gene.
Bivalirudin, sold under the brand names Angiomax and Angiox, among others, is a specific and reversible direct thrombin inhibitor (DTI). Chemically, it is a synthetic congener of the naturally occurring drug hirudin, found in the saliva of the medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis. It is manufactured by The Medicines Company.
The history of invasive and interventional cardiology is complex, with multiple groups working independently on similar technologies. Invasive and interventional cardiology is currently closely associated with cardiologists, though the development and most of its early research and procedures were performed by diagnostic and interventional radiologists.
The Libin Cardiovascular Institute is an entity of Alberta Health Services and the University of Calgary. It connects all cardiovascular research, education and patient care in Southern Alberta, serving a population of about two million. Its more than 1,500 members include physicians, clinicians and other health professionals, researchers and trainees.
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may travel into the shoulder, arm, back, neck or jaw. Often such pain occurs in the center or left side of the chest and lasts for more than a few minutes. The discomfort may occasionally feel like heartburn.
Jonathan L. Halperin is an American cardiologist and the author of Bypass (ISBN 0-89586-509-2), among the most comprehensive works on the subject of coronary artery bypass surgery. In addition, he is the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor of Medicine at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine as well as Director of Clinical Cardiology in the Zena and Michael A. Wierner Cardiovascular Institute at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, both in New York City. Halperin was the principal cardiologist responsible for both the design and execution of the multi-center Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation (SPAF) clinical trials, funded by the National Institutes of Health, which helped develop antithrombotic strategies to prevent stroke, and he subsequently directed the SPORTIF clinical trials, which evaluated the first oral direct thrombin inhibitor for prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation.
Management of acute coronary syndrome is targeted against the effects of reduced blood flow to the affected area of the heart muscle, usually because of a blood clot in one of the coronary arteries, the vessels that supply oxygenated blood to the myocardium. This is achieved with urgent hospitalization and medical therapy, including drugs that relieve chest pain and reduce the size of the infarct, and drugs that inhibit clot formation; for a subset of patients invasive measures are also employed. Basic principles of management are the same for all types of acute coronary syndrome. However, some important aspects of treatment depend on the presence or absence of elevation of the ST segment on the electrocardiogram, which classifies cases upon presentation to either ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) or non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (NST-ACS); the latter includes unstable angina and non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI). Treatment is generally more aggressive for STEMI patients, and reperfusion therapy is more often reserved for them. Long-term therapy is necessary for prevention of recurrent events and complications.
Barry A. Love is an American cardiologist specializing in pediatric and congenital heart problems.
Professor Aly Saad, is a professor of cardiology at Zagazig University and a member of the higher committee of promotion of professors and assistant professors of cardiovascular diseases and critical care subspecialty in Egypt.
Remote ischemic conditioning (RIC) is an experimental medical procedure that aims to reduce the severity of ischaemic injury to an organ such as the heart or the brain, most commonly in the situation of a heart attack or a stroke, or during procedures such as heart surgery when the heart may temporary suffer ischaemia during the operation, by triggering the body's natural protection against tissue injury. Although noted to have some benefits in experimental models in animals, this is still an experimental procedure in humans and initial evidence from small studies have not been replicated in larger clinical trials. Successive clinical trials have failed to identify evidence supporting a protective role in humans.
George "Rick" Stouffer is an American cardiologist who is Chief of the Division of Cardiology at the University of North Carolina Medical Center, where he is a practicing interventional cardiologist. Stouffer was awarded the Ernest and Hazel Craige Distinguished Professorship of Medicine in 2018; prior to that he was the Henry A. Foscue Distinguished Professor of Medicine. Stouffer is also co-director of the McAllister Heart Institute. He is known for his research regarding inpatient ST elevation myocardial infarctions.
Samin K. Sharma is an American philanthropist of Indian descent and an interventional cardiologist who co-founded the Eternal Heart Care Centre and Research Institute in Jaipur (EHCC). Sharma has served on New York State’s Cardiac Advisory Board since 2004. As of 2021, he is Senior Vice-President, Operations & Quality at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and runs the Dr. Samin K. Sharma Family Foundation Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. As of 2018, he is Chairman Board of Trustees, Association of Indians in America (AIA). As of 2022, he has been an investigator on 86 grants and multi-center trials and authored 486 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited 21,734 times.
Roxana Mehran is an Iranian-American cardiologist and Mount Sinai Endowed Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is known for her work in interventional cardiology.
Alfredo E. Rodríguez is an Argentine interventional cardiologist, clinical researcher, and author. He is the Chief of Interventional Cardiology Service at Otamendi Hospital and Director and Founder of the Cardiovascular Research Center (CECI) a non -profit Research Organization in Buenos Aires Argentina.
