Dear Colleagues,
We welcome you in the 3rd Transcatheter Heart Valve Therapies (THVT) Conference, held at the N. After the success of the past meetings, we felt we should continue this effort to educate, update, interact and demonstrate the latest developments in this cutting edge area of Interventional Cardiology/Cardiac Surgery. With approximately 300 transcatheter valve implantations and repa
irs performed in Greece over the past year, the field is rapidly expanding in our country too. Thus, interaction between all the Greek Heart Teams and the Medical Professionals involved in the management of valve disease is becoming essential in securing the optimal health care delivery to the Greek patients, and this is one of the main targets of this meeting. Traditionally, valvular heart disease has been treated with surgical repair or replacement. Over the last several years, however, there have been important advances in concepts, tools, techniques, and patient selection for treatment of valvular heart disease using nonsurgical transcatheter procedures. Transcatheter valve intervention offers the potential to reduce procedural morbidity, mortality, and costs of surgical valve replacement or repair while minimizing patient discomfort and accelerating recovery. Percutaneous aortic valve replacement and mitral valve repair are being utilized worldwide in inoperable and high-risk surgical patients, a practice that is now maturing and supported by clinical trials and guidelines. By the end of this course, participants should be able to evaluate patients with valvular heart disease for THVT, assess the imaging modalities for screening and acquire the skills necessary to perform transcatheter valve therapies. Our wish and hope is that the dissemination of new knowledge will help more patients with heart valve disease, whose management with conventional surgery is problematic.
