Pier Pasquale Leone, cardiology fellow, as Faculty at Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Pier Pasquale Leone, fourth-year cardiology fellow at Humanitas University, was appointed member of the faculty at Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) 2022, the Cardiovascular Research Foundation’s annual scientific symposium and the world’s foremost educational forum specialising in interventional cardiovascular medicine, held in Boston, Massachusetts, USA from 16th to 19th September.

Every year, TCT features major medical research breakthroughs and gathers leading researchers and clinicians from around the world to present and discuss the latest evidence-based research. More than 6,000 people were present at this year’s meeting.

Dr. Leone, one of the youngest members of the faculty, was involved, among others, as panelist in the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) session Managing the Patient with a Small Annulus, held in the Structural Theater on 17th September, which included a live TAVR case transmitted from Toulouse, France. One of the abstracts proposed by Dr. Leone was also featured as part of the Best Structural Heart Disease Abstracts session.

Indeed, Dr. Leone has been particularly active in clinical research on patients with small aortic annuli undergoing TAVR, as part of an international collaboration involving 16 centers and lead by Dr. Azeem Latib, Director of Interventional Cardiology and Structural Heart Program at Montefiore Medical Center and Associate Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, whom Pier Pasquale has joined this year as visiting fellow. Such collaboration sees actively involved Dr. Bernhard Reimers, Director of Cardiology at Humanitas Research Hospital, Dr. Damiano Regazzoli, Attending Interventional Cardiologist at Humanitas Research Hospital, Prof. Antonio Colombo, Extraordinary Professor at Humanitas University and Senior Consultant at Humanitas Research Hospital, Dr. Antonio Mangieri, Interventional Cardiologist at Humanitas Research Hospital, and Prof. Giulio Stefanini, Associate Professor at Humanitas University and Interventional Cardiologist at Humanitas Research Hospital.

Dr. Leone concludes: “TAVR has affirmed itself over the course of the past 20 years as standard of care in the treatment of patients with severe aortic stenosis. It is a procedure involving implantation of a new valve on top of a stenotic malfunctioning aortic valve via a minimally invasive (“transcatheter”) access at the femoral artery in most of cases. Different types of valves are available as of today, and particular settings may favor one over the others. We reported our experience from the TAVI-SMALL 2 registry, the largest multicenter cohort of patients with severe aortic stenosis and small aortic annuli undergoing TAVR as of today. This field of research is extremely contemporary and subject of debate. Our work is currently aiming to assess the overall performance of different transcatheter heart valves, and demonstrate the negative impact of suboptimal systolic flow hemodynamics after TAVR. As a cardiology fellow in my late twenties, I was also honored to be seating with worldwide experts in the field, and to have the chance to discuss recent developments on the matter. I need to thank each collaborator, and Drs. Latib, Reimers, Regazzoli and Colombo in particular, for giving me the opportunity to represent our experience and collaboration at this premier educational meeting. Last, but not least, I would like to thank Prof. Gianluigi Condorelli, Director of the Cardiology Fellowship at Humanitas University, for supporting me throughout my journey and formation as a cardiologist interested in interventional cardiology and structural heart disease.”