SCAI Creates New Council for Rising Interest in Interventional Therapies for Structural Hea...(r structural heart diseaseresearch and e...),Health

Dr. Hijazi, who is professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at Rush University and director of the Rush Center for Congenital & Structural Heart Disease in Chicago, is a pioneer in this subspecialty field and will co-chair the SCAI Structural Heart Disease Council. His co-chair is Ted Feldman, MD, FSCAI, professor of medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine, director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Evanston Hospital, and a past president of SCAI.

SCAI's Structural Heart Disease Council will create a forum for worldwide collaboration on issues facing cardiovascular specialists who treat structural heart disease, so that they have guidelines, tools, and resources that will help them to provide optimal patient care. SCAI envisions a multi-specialty effort, led by its council, to promote communication and cooperation among organizations and cardiovascular societies in the field.

"This is the first collaborative effort by a professional society to develop guidelines and performance criteria for this emerging field," said Dr. Feldman. "We expect our efforts will lead the development of and have a worldwide impact on this subspecialty to achieve the fundamental goal of benefiting our patients."

Among the goals for the SCAI Council is to facilitate the development of guidelines for training of physicians in structural heart disease intervention in collaboration with both the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Pediatrics. The Council will also facilitate in establishing objective performance criteria for interventional therapies in structural heart conditions, including --

-- Aortic valve replacement;

-- Mitral valve repair/replacement techniques;

-- Pulmonary valve replacement;