Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein: the European TAVR/TAVI experience

Introduction

During the 24^th Annual Meeting of Asian Society for Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery (ASCVTS) in conjunction with 9^th AATS/ASCVTS Postgraduate Course and 4^th Asian Single Port VATS Symposium, Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein described the European experience with transcatheter aortic valve implantation/replacement (TAVI, TAVR) It was our honor to invite Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein for a brief interview.

Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein (Figure 1) is a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Erasmus MC Rotterdam and also the residency program director. His research interests are coronary surgery, valve surgery including transcatheter valve implantation, and thoracic surgery. Prof. Kapptein is member of many renowned professional societies, including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. He has published more than 360 articles with about 16,000 citations.

Figure 1 Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein.

Interview

During the interview, Prof. Kapptein pointed out that based on the favorable results of TAVR, more and more patients in Europe choose this procedure. In the opinion of Prof. Kapptein, better valves, less vascular injury and less bleeding complication with smaller sheath size are recent advances. Yet, paravalvular leakage and pacemaker need are still issues with TAVR. Finally, Prof. Kapptein shared his ideas on training for the TAVR procedure.

Interview questions:

• Could you provide a brief summary of your lectures for our readers who could not be on site?
• How to select treatment with mechanical versus bioprosthetic valve?
• What are recent advances of TAVR/TAVI?
• What are current challenges of TAVR/TAVI?
• How to train young surgeons in the field of TAVR/TAVI?
• Why you choose to become a surgeon?

For more details about this interview, please refer to the following video (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Interview with Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein (1). Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1318

Acknowledgements

On behalf of the editorial office of Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy (CDT), I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Kapptein for sharing his opinion with us.

Footnote

Conflicts of Interest: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

References

1. Kapptein AP. Prof. Arie Pieter Kapptein: the European TAVR/TAVI experience. Asvide 2017;4:012. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1318