FACULTY 2022

Dr Shouvik Haldar is a Consultant Cardiologist & Electrophysiologist at the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. He graduated from Guy’s and St Thomas’s Medical School, trained in NW Thames Cardiology Training Programme, and completed his subspecialty training at the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Toronto. He has a strong research record, publishing many peer reviewed articles, and is an invited speaker at international conferences and meetings in the US and Europe. Dr Haldar is passionate about medical education and is currently Chair of Education at the British Cardiovascular Society and Arrythmia Alliance Heart Rhythm Congress Programme Director.

Dr Tom Wong is a Consultant Cardiologist & Electrophysiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals. He is a Professor of Cardiology at King’s College London and Reader at National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. He is the clinical and research lead of the arrhythmia services at both Royal Brompton and Harefield sites, one of the largest arrhythmia services in UK.

His research interests mirror his clinical practice focus upon the characterisation and the therapeutic intervention of arrhythmias in advanced disease states and complex cardiac anatomies.

He has published over 100 peer review papers in leading peer reviewed scientific journals. His expertise is in the understanding, investigations and treatment of arrhythmias; in particular the interventional investigation therapies including catheter ablation and implantable cardiac devices to treat complex arrhythmias.

Dr Vias Markides is a Consultant Cardiologist & Electrophysiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals. He studied at Imperial College, London, qualifying in 1992 with distinction in all subjects and was awarded the University of London Gold Medal.

He continued his training in a number of teaching centres in London, including St Mary’s, St Thomas’ and Hammersmith hospitals.

In 2002, he was appointed as consultant cardiologist with an interest in arrhythmias and led the arrhythmia service on both sites of the Trust for ten years. The arrhythmia service has developed into the largest service of its type in the UK.

Dr Markides has been a writing member for the National Service Framework for CHD (Chapter 8: Arrhythmias), and for a number of years was the clinical lead for arrhythmias/devices for the Northwest London Cardiovascular and Stroke Network, before taking overall leadership for cardiovascular services for the same network. He has played an important role in the shaping and delivery of a novel model of care for arrhythmias in London.

Professor Jens Cosedis Nielsen was appointed Professor of Electrophysiology at Aarhus University in 2011, and from 2021 Co-director of Department of Cardiology at Aarhus University Hospital. Born 1964 in Denmark, Jens Cosedis Nielsen studied medicine at Aarhus University and obtained his MD in 1991. Defended his PhD thesis on optimal pacing mode in patients with sick sinus syndrome in 2000 and worked as a fellow in internal medicine and cardiology at Danish hospitals until 2004. Following a year at Herzzentrum Leipzig (2004-2005), Jens Cosedis Nielsen earned a position as Associate Consultant at the Department of Cardiology, Aarhus University Hospital in 2007. The same year, he defended his doctoral thesis on pacing mode selection in patients with sick sinus syndrome. In 2011, Jens Cosedis Nielsen was appointed Professor of Electrophysiology at Aarhus University, and from 2021 Co-director of Department of Cardiology at Aarhus University Hospital. Professor Nielsen's research group focuses primarily on device therapy, cardiac resynchronization therapy, device complications and outcome after device therapy, but also strives to improve catheter ablation for atrial

fibrillation. Jens Cosedis Nielsen accounts for 280 publications in international journals, and has an H-index 44.

Dr Honey Thomas is a Consultant Cardiologist at Northumbria Healthcare NHS foundation trust in the North East of England. I completed my cardiology training and postgraduate MD qualification in the Northeast, developing a subspecialty interest in heart failure and advanced rhythm management/complex device implantation. I introduced and jointly lead the service within our trust for implantation and follow up of complex cardiac devices and lead our local multidisciplinary heart failure service. I jointly lead cardiology research within the Northumbria healthcare and act as Principal Investigator on several multicentre NIHR trials. I am a member of the examination board for the British Heart Rhythm Society professional accreditation qualification. I have a major interest in atrial fibrillation and am passionate about improving the quality of care in this area. I have developed local and regional pathways to try and optimise the care of patients with AF. I have designed and introduced an innovative patient safety alert card for non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs) which has been implemented across the North of England and adopted by many other parts of the UK.

Professor Rod S Passman is a Consultant Cardiac Electrophysiologist, a clinician specializing in heart rhythm disorders. He joined Feinberg School of Medicine in 1998 as an assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and was awarded the title of full professor in 2013. He also holds an appointment in the Department of Preventive Medicine. Dr Passman's main interests are cardiac monitoring and stroke prevention.

Dr Svennberg currently holda a combined research and clinical position in the department of Cardiology at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Her main clinical and research interests lie within the topic of digital screening for atrial fibrillation. In that capacity she is involved in several of the largest screening studies for atrial fibrillation- Strokestop 1 & 2. Dr Svennberg has received the Swedish Society of Cardiology's research award twice for her work. Her interest for detecting asymptomatic atrial fibrillation and improving care for patients with arrhythmias sparked her interest in digital health. She is currently a member of the European Heart Rhythm association's board and is assigned the role as chair of the Digital Committee. In that capacity she is also liaised to the ESC and Heart Rhythm Society's digital health committees.

Dr Francis Murgatroyd is a Consultant Cardiologist at King’s College Hospital in London and Clinical Lead of Cardiac Electrophysiology specializing exclusively in the treatment of heart rhythm disorders. He was appointed in 2000 as a Consultant Cardiologist at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, before moving to King’s in 2004.

Dr Murgatroyd completed his first degree at Cambridge, qualifying medically from Oxford University in 1985. He trained in Cardiology at St George’s Hospital in London, and in Leicester, completing a senior fellowship at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. His clinical and research interests include all aspects of arrhythmia treatment, including catheter ablation, pacemaker and defibrillator therapy.

Professor Aldo Rinaldi is a Consultant Cardiologist at Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. He trained in Medicine at King's College Hospital becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1993 and subsequently a Fellow in 2006. He undertook his training in Cardiology at Guy's & St Thomas' Hospitals with dual accreditation in Cardiology & General Medicine. He undertook his Research at the University Hospital of Wales and the Hammersmith Hospital gaining his MD in 2001. He became a Fellow of the Heart Rhythm Society in 2013. In 2014 he was promoted to Professor of Cardiac Electrophysiology and Devices at King’s college London. He practices as an Interventional Cardiologist/Electrophysiologist specializing in the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure, electrophysiology/radiofrequency ablation and complex pacing. He has a special interest in Cardiac Resynchronisation Therapy for heart failure, laser lead extraction and treatment of atrial fibrillation. He leads the Cardiac Device service at St Thomas’ Hospital and the Cardiac Device Research Programme. He has published over 300 peer reviewed papers and book chapters.

Dr Julian Jarman is a Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, who treats private and NHS patients.

He studied medicine at the University of Cambridge, St Mary’s Hospital Medical School (now part of Imperial College London), and Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. He undertook specialist fellowship training in interventional cardiac electrophysiology and complex pacing at several leading London teaching hospitals.

He has developed novel techniques for ablation of atrial fibrillation using non-contact mapping, as part of his postgraduate doctorate of medicine (MD) at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

Dr Jarman is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and has completed both the fellow and the membership diplomas. He has certification examinations from the European Heart Rhythm Association in invasive cardiac electrophysiology, cardiac pacing and ICDs.

Dr. Daniel Kramer is a Consultant Cardiologist and Associate Professor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He studied Philosophy at Brown University prior to earning his MD from Harvard Medical School and MPH from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He completed internal medicine training at Massachusetts General Hospital and fellowships in cardiovascular disease at clinical cardiac electrophysiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, as well as the Medical Device Fellowship Program with the FDA. He is a member of the cardiac electrophysiology service at BIDMC, where he is part of the Richard and Susan Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology.

Dr. Kramer’s research focuses on ethics, policy, and clinical outcomes related to the use of cardiac devices, with funding support from the Harvard Catalyst, Paul Beeson Scholars Program, and Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics.

Dr Mark Mason is a Consultant Cardiologist at Harefield Hospital with expertise in coronary intervention, formerly the hospital's divisional director for heart. He was seconded to the role of medical director of Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals in July 2019, before being appointed to the permanent post.

Dr Mason is nationally recognised as a specialist in pacing lead extraction and has been a specialist advisor to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the use of laser sheaths to remove pacing leads.

Dr Mason has played a key role in developing the nationally acclaimed primary angioplasty programme at Harefield Hospital. He has also developed one of the busiest pacing services in the UK, delivering a complete range of pacing implantation and extraction techniques.

He is actively involved in developing innovative pathways to make smoother transitions between primary care and secondary/tertiary care, to improve the patient journey at both a local and regional level.

He is also a member of the Pan-London Arrhythmia Group looking to improve both elective and emergency care of patients with arrhythmias.

Professor of Medicine, Director of Clinical Catheter Ablation Program, Director of Translational Electrophysiology at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center: 2007-2019; Clinical Professor of Medicine, Director of Translational Electrophysiology at the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic: 2019- Present.

Vivek Y. Reddy, MD is Director of Electrophysiology for the Mount Sinai Health System, and The Helmsley Trust Professor of Medicine in Cardiac Electrophysiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.

Dr. Reddy received both his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Michigan. He completed Internal Medicine Residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Cardiology Fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined as an Electrophysiology Attending at Massachusetts General Hospital, and also served as Director of the Experimental Electrophysiology Laboratory. He then became the Director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, before joining the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2009 as a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service. Dr. Reddy also serves as Visiting Professor of Cardiology at Homolka Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic.

Dr. Reddy is one of the world’s premier cardiac electrophysiologists. He leads a team of physician-scientists who are developing and testing advanced therapies for cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure, including catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, and device therapies for stroke prevention. Under his leadership, Mount Sinai is the lead investigational site for many multinational clinical trials exploring novel therapies, most recently pulsed field ablation to treat atrial fibrillation. Moreover, in 2014, he implanted the world’s first miniature leadless pacemaker, as well as the first leadless pacemaker in the United States at The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Head of the EP department in the Heart Center, OLV Hospital in Aalst. Professional interests are complex ablation treatments, translational research and early stage clinical trials focusing on technological innovations for rhythm control or stroke prevention. Current co-chair of the EHRA 2021-2022 congress committee.

Professor Betts is a Consultant in Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and an Associate Professor in the Oxford University Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. He undertakes simple and complex catheter ablation and implants pacemakers, ICDs and cardiac resynchronisation devices, including leadless pacing, the subcutaneous ICD and the EBR WiSE CRT ultrasound stimulation system. He also has expertise in left atrial appendage occlusion devices.

Professor Betts is on the National Cardiac Societies Committee for the European Heart Rhythm Association and is the left atrial appendage occlusion representative on the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society Structural Intervention Working Group. He is a member of BCS, BHRA and EHRA. He has published more than 150 original articles and co-authored the Oxford Handbooks for Pacing and ICDs and for Cardiac Electrophysiology.

Professor Mark O’Neill graduated from University College Dublin Medical School in 1998 with 1st class honours and a physiology doctorate (DPhil), which he completed at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar (1992-1995).

Postgraduate training in general medicine and cardiology was followed by subspecialty training in interventional cardiac electrophysiology (2003-7). He also trained in Bordeaux with Professors Michel Haïssaguerre and Pierre Jaïs in catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (2004-5). Atrial arrhythmias have remained his main clinical and research interest. He was appointed senior lecturer at Imperial College in 2008.

In 2009, Mark joined St Thomas’ Hospital and King’s College London in the Department of Cardiology and Division of Imaging Sciences where he was promoted to Reader in 2011 and Professor in 2013. He currently supervises five PhD students and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers, books and proceedings in the field of arrhythmia medicine. He is an internationally recognised expert in catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation and tachycardia.

Mark served as a council member of the British Heart Rhythm Society from 2011-2014. He founded the London Deanery Subspecialty Electrophysiology Training Programme in 2008 and is the current president of the cardiology section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He holds a Bronze National Clinical Excellence Award (2015).

He has an interest in the history of extreme human endeavour and enjoys running, cycling and football.

Department of Cardiology – University Hospital Nancy

Josef Kautzner is Professor of Medicine at Charles University Medical School I in Prague, Czech Republic. A specialist in cardiology and electrophysiology, he is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and a member of the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) and the European Heart Rhythm Association. He is also Chairman of the Working Group on Arrhythmias and Cardiac Pacing of the Czech Society of Cardiology. His clinical and research interests include prevention of sudden cardiac death, catheter ablation of different arrhythmia substrates and cardiac resynchronisation therapy.

Prof Kautzner is a member of the Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology Review editorial board.

Dr Saba received his MB, MCh from Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine, Egypt in 1994. He then went on to complete a house officer post at Cairo University Hospitals in 1995, completed a fellowship program and MSc degree in cardiovascular medicine from 1996 to 1999 before taking up a post as lecturer in cardiovascular medicine at Cairo University in November 1999.

Dr Saba then completed an internship at the State University of New York and a residency in internal medicine at The George Washington University, Washington DC. He underwent a three year fellowship training program in cardiology at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana between 2002 and 2005. This was followed by a fellowship in clinical cardiac electrophysiology at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, Chicago.

Dr Saba was then appointed assistant professor of medicine in the division of cardiology, cardiac arrhythmia service at the University of Maryland Medical Centre, Baltimore from 2006 to 2010 before being appointed a consultant cardiologist and senior lecturer at St George's Hospital and St George's, University of London.

Dr Saba is chairman of The London Ventricular Tachyarrhythmia Symposium which is dedicated to improving outcomes of patients with ventricular arrhythmia, he also holds a patent on a method to determine the site of origin of ventricular tachycardia.

I work at the Royal Brompton Hospital as a consultant in congenital electrophysiology and am Co-Director of Childrens’ services at the Trust. I have helped build the inherited cardiac conditions unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital and lead in Channelopathies, caring for both adults and children with channelopathies. My major interest is device treatment, genetics and management of channelopathies. I am current president of the Association for Inherited Cardiac Conditions having served as a council member for some years and have a passionate interest in raising awareness and identifying ways in which we can improve care of patients and families living their lives with ICC.