Extract
In delivering the 2017 ESC Andreas Grüntzig Lecture on Interventional Cardiology at the ESC 2017, Dr Marie-Claude Morice recalled how the advent of TAVI and her early experience of the procedure felt like ‘starting from scratch’ as an interventional cardiologist
Marie-Claude Morice, as one of the world’s leading cardiac clinicians and researchers, it was those initial experiences that formed a key part of her presentation—‘The revolution in the treatment of patients with aortic stenosis’—which focused on transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), a procedure she acknowledges as ‘a major landmark of Grüntzig’s legacy’. Speaking ahead of the lecture, she reflected on how TAVI today is a procedure that ‘offers prolonged survival with improved quality of life for inoperable patients with severe aortic stenosis who were otherwise expected to die’.
But, in recounting her own experience of TAVI, she acknowledged that there were many challenges that went with it. ‘Despite years of experience as a seasoned interventional cardiologist, it felt like starting from the beginning again’, she recalled. ‘I was confronted once again with tough beginnings, new challenges, technical difficulties and life-threatening complications. I had to convince the patients, their family and other physicians amidst accusations of providing futile medical care’.
