Sharon L. Mulvagh MD, FRCP(C), FASE, FACC, FAHA
Organizing Committee
Sharon L. Mulvagh (Chair), Igal Sebag (Co-Chair), Chi-Ming Chow (Webmaster),
Jeremy Adams, Shaheeda Ahmed, Aws Almufleh, Carly Burry, Ian Burwash,
Annabel Chen-Tournoux, Michael Chetrit, Heather Cooley, Robin Ducas, Tyler Lamb, Christina Luong, David Messika-Zeitoun, Thi Kim Hanh Nguyen, Steven Promislow, Kenneth Szeto, Sara Faubert
Overall Course Objectives:
At the end of this program, participants will be able to:
-Describe the current role and application of echocardiography in patients with suspected and overt cardiac disease
- Identify how novel and evolving echocardiography techniques can be applied to the clinical practice of echocardiography
-Describe how echocardiography integrates with other cardiac imaging modalities to optimally evaluate the patient with suspected or confirmed cardiovascular disease
Overall and individual session goals will be obtained by offering expert speakers combined with an interactive and usually case-based format to enhance applicability of transmitted information.
Adequate time will be reserved for audience questions, comprising approximately 25% of each talk/session.
In addition, faculty will be available for audience questions during breaks. In order to optimize audience concentration, presentations will be available to the registrants in a PDF format prior to the live presentations.
Session Objectives
The Conundrum of the Thick Heart: A Multimodality Imaging Approach
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Review the role of echocardiography and multimodality imaging in diagnosis and management of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
-Understand the indications for and interpretation of echocardiography and multimodality imaging in diagnosis and management of infiltrative cardiomyopathies.
-Recognize the continued and evolving utility of echocardiography and complementary imaging modalities in evaluation of the thickened myocardium through case-study analysis.
Pericardial Disease: Navigating the Spectrum
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Discuss the echocardiographic diagnosis of pericardial tamponade.
-Describe the echocardiographic manifestations of constrictive pericarditis
-Understand the importance of echocardiography as well as multi-modality imaging to guide diagnosis and management of pericarditis.
Adult Congenital Heart Disease - A Primer
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Understand the comprehensive transthoracic echocardiographic approach to the evaluation of patients for adult congenital heart disease, including atrial septal defect (ASD), ventricular septal defect (VSD), patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), tetralogy of fallot (TOF) and transposition of the great arteries (TGA).
-Describe the role of the echocardiographic evaluation of patients with adult congenital heart disease in considering interventional and surgical interventions.
-Recognize the indications for and significance of ACHD imaging in pregnancy.
Contemporary Assessment of Pulmonary Hypertension
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Understand the differences in the ASE and EACVI guidelines for imaging in pulmonary hypertension patients
-Describe the high-risk echocardiographic findings that suggest a poor prognosis in patients with pulmonary hypertension.
-Describe new echocardiographic indices for the evaluation of pulmonary hypertension
EACVI Lecture: Is excessive trabeculation of the left ventricle a disease entity?
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-To explain why the term noncompaction should be discouraged and excessive trabeculation be used instead
-To discuss why presence of excessive trabeculation in adults should not affect clinical management
-To be aware that presence in excessive trabeculation in infants and children may still need special considerations regarding clinical management
Valvular Heart Disease and Trans-Catheter Interventions: Is my Patient a Candidate?
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Recognize the value of TTE and TEE imaging in TAVI patients.
-Describe the comprehensive transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiographic imaging approach to the evaluation of patients for mitral and tricuspid clip intervention.
-Understand how transesophageal echocardiography can be used to guide mitral and tricuspid clip interventions
Conundrums of the Right-Heart - Clearing the Fog
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Assess the complex interplay between physiology and morphology in the determination of tricuspid valve function.
-Describe in detail the use of echocardiography in the evaluation of patients who present with tricuspid regurgitation and how to quantitatively assess tricuspid regurgitation
-Recognize the clinical evidence supporting tricuspid clip interventions
Artificial Intelligence: Beyond the Mystique and the Hype
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Understand the role of artificial intelligence in medical imaging
-Describe artificial intelligence solutions that enable automated measurements and reporting.
-Understand the current and future role of machine/deep learning to practice of echocardiography.
Diastology: Basic to Advanced
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Describe the role of echocardiography in the assessment of diastolic function, according to ASE and EACVI guidelines
-Understand how to resolve discrepant or indeterminate values in the echocardiographic assessment of diastolic function
Stress Echo: GWTG and Do It Right!
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Describe role of stress echocardiography in the assessment of the dyspneic patient.
-Understand how to optimally perform a supine exercise bike study.
-Recognize the emerging role of strain assessment in stress echocardiography.
Multimodality Imaging of Acute Ischemic Syndromes
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Describe the role of echocardiography the assessment of post-MI complications.
-Recognize the value of multimodality imaging in determining the etiology of MINOCA
-Describe the echocardiographic findings in stress cardiomyopathy and myocarditis
ASE Lecture: Echocardiography: at the crossroads of imaging and intervention.
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Describe the echocardiographic features used in patient selection for transcatheter mitral and tricuspid valve intervention.
-Recognize applications for patient-specific digital and physical modeling.
-Recall the summary points of the new ASE training guidelines for interventional echocardiography.
Trainee How-To: Seeking Opportunities Beyond our Borders
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Understand the opportunities for advanced echocardiography and research training
-Discuss mechanisms and approaches to achieving competence in advanced echocardiographic techniques
Sonographer Forum: Ergonomics, Workflow, and How to make this Image better?
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Recognize echocardiographic findings in endocarditis.
-Describe practical and advanced echocardiographic techniques to optimize imaging
-Understand ergonomic and workflow approaches to facilitating echocardiographic studies.
Multidisciplinary Approach to Critical Care Echo
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Review the role of point of care ultrasound in the hemodynamic assessment of the ICU patient.
-Describe role of critical care to assess the acutely dyspneic patient.
-Understand the role of echocardiography in managing the septic patient.
The Nuts & Bolts of Echo Lab Accreditation
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Discuss how to set up a quality assurance program in your echo lab.
-Understand how to implement improvements for quality assurance
Special Silver Anniversary Session: "Echo in Canada"
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Describe the evolution of echocardiography in Canada over the past several decades to better understand the current utility of echocardiography.
-Understand how to integrate established and emerging echocardiographic techniques (such as 3D echo, contrast and strain as well as multimodality imaging) in evaluating patients with valvular heart diseases (including post-intervention), non-ischemic heart disease and stroke/embolism.
-Review evolving echocardiographic and information technology advances that will drive the future of cardiac imaging for clinical management, including artificial intelligence, fusion and vortex imaging
Cases across Canada:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Learn from interesting echo cases from across Canada as presented by our national and international faculty members.
-Understand the controversies and key learning points from the cases presented.
-Engage in the discussion around these challenging cases using Twitter audience response and live questioning.
Workshops and Learning Labs – General objectives:
Review four clinically important areas in echocardiography (Strain, 3-D, Contrast Echo, POCUS) in smaller group settings including computer interaction or live scanning to enhance learning and enable interactions among participants.
Strain Learning Lab:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Understand the practical aspects of performing 2D strain imaging
-Review the specific 2D strain online and offline echo analysis packages.
-Demonstrate in a small group setting how to optimally use the 2D strain analysis in clinical applications such as follow-up of cancer chemotherapy patients and cardiomyopathies.
3-D Learning Lab:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Review the specific 3D online and offline echo analysis packages offered on the GE and Philips platforms.
-Demonstrate in a small group setting how to optimally use the 3D cropping methods.
-Demonstrate in a small group setting how to optimally use the LV and mitral valve analysis packages.
POCUS workshop:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Understand how POCUS can be used by the cardiologist in day to day practice
-Perform lung ultrasound technique.
-Recognize the training requirements for the optimal use of POCUS.
-Describe the limitations of hand-help and point-of-care ultrasound to ensure its complementary role with a comprehensive echocardiographic exam.
Contrast workshop:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
-Demonstrate in a live and interactive setting how to utilize echo contrast and incorporate the echo contrast in the workflow of a busy echo lab.
-Describe the basic concepts, indications and practical considerations in contrast echocardiography
-Recognize the incremental value of contrast echo.
Thank You to all of our Sponsors
Alberto Goffi, MD, is a Staff Physician at St. Michael’s Hospital – Unity Health Toronto and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Medicine and Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine (IDCCM). After graduating from the University of Torino (Italy) and completing his internal medicine training in the same city, he moved to Toronto in 2010 for a fellowship in adult critical care medicine. His clinical and academic interests include neurocritical care and point-of-care ultrasound in acute care medicine, with a focus on lung ultrasound and optimal teaching strategies for its competency achievement. He is the co-lead of the IDCCM Critical Care Ultrasound Curriculum and the co-lead of the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC) Adult Critical Care Medicine fellowship.
Alberto loves travelling for teaching; he has already taught ultrasound and neurocritical care in five different continents. In 2015, he won the Young Lecturer Award at the ESICM annual meeting. In 2019, he has been selected as the recipient of the Frank S. Rutledge Award of Excellence in Critical Care Teaching. Outside of work, Alberto has a passion for creating logos and drawings digitally; the IDCCM logo is one of his creations. In the past 4 years, he has learned that nothing is more fulfilling (and tiring!) in life than playing with Sofia and Oliver, his two children.
Dr. Amélie Paquin is a fellow in Advanced Echocardiography and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. She completed her cardiology training and a master’s degree in clinical Epidemiology at Laval University. She is also currently undergoing doctoral studies in collaboration with Laval University, studying the sex-specific impact of cardiometabolic risk factors on myocardial remodeling. She is supported by scholarships from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Fonds de recherche du Québec en santé, Association des cardiologues du Québec, and Laval University McLaughlin Dean’s Scholarship.
Dr. Anna Woo received her MD degree at McGill University and she trained in Cardiology and Echocardiography at the University of Toronto. She completed her Master of Science degree in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Woo is a staff cardiologist based at the Toronto General Hospital (TGH), where she attends in the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) Clinic. In addition, she is the Director of the Echocardiography Laboratory at the University Health Network (Toronto General and Toronto Western Hospitals).
Dr. Woo’s research and academic interests have mainly focused on HCM and on advanced echo techniques. She has contributed to a number of national and international guidelines, including the 2011 and 2022 versions of the American Society of Echocardiography Guidelines for multimodality imaging in HCM. Dr. Woo is on the Board of Directors of the HCM Society (HCMS).
Dr. Aws Almufleh is a cardiologist specializing in echocardiography and advanced heart failure. He is the Physician Lead of the Heart Function Clinic and holds academic appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor of Medicine at Queen’s University. He received his medical degree with First Class Honors from King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2012. He then completed a Master of Public Health (MPH) at the University of Miami focusing on epidemiology and clinical research. He did internal medicine residency at McGill University where he served as the Chief Medical Resident. Following cardiology fellowship training at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (2016-2019), Dr. Almufleh completed an advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School (2019-2020) and earned the Pierce Fellow Award for Scholarship in Cardiomyopathy in recognition of his clinical and research achievements. Dr. Almufleh also completed an advanced echocardiography fellowship at Vancouver General Hospital/University of British Columbia (2020-2021). Concurrently, he pursued research training through the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training (GCSRT) program at Harvard Medical School with emphasis on advanced quantitative research methodology and study design.
Dr. Almufleh has a keen interest in medical education and echocardiography. He is the Echocardiography rotation director for cardiology fellows and non-cardiology learners at Queen’s University. He moderates a weekly echocardiography teaching round where faculty goes over interesting echocardiograms with cardiology fellows and sonographers. He is a faculty member of the Queen’s Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) fellowship training program. Furthermore, he is serving a two-year term as a member-at-large in the Canadian Society of Echocardiography Board of Directors. As for research pursuit, Dr. Almufleh, under the mentorship of Dr. Parvathy Nair from the University of British Columbia, is the lead author of a medical education project aimed at optimizing echocardiography competency training during cardiology fellowship which earned the Canadian Cardiovascular Ultrasound Research Excellence Award for Technology & Education – $50,000 CREATE Grant. He is also a co-investigator in the echocardiography online quality assessment and direct feedback modules project led by Drs. Robin Ducas and Che-Ming Chow. Dr. Almufleh has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles and was a co-investigator of the large-scale randomized controlled trial comparing Milrinone with Dobutamine in the Treatment of Cardiogenic Shock; published in the New England Journal of Medicine in August 2021.
Carly Burry is a cardiac sonographer at the Colchester East Hants Health Authority in Truro, Nova Scotia. After completing her Bachelor of Kinesiology, she completed her Cardiac Sonography program at Mohawk College and began her career as a Sonographer.
Credentials/Training:
Undergraduate medicine, McGill University, 1998-2001
Internal Medicine, McGill University, 1995-1998
Cardiology, McGill University, 1998-2001
Echocardiography Fellowship, McGill University, 2001-2002
Cardiovascular MRI Fellowship, National Institutes of Health, 2002-2004
Current Positions:
Staff Cardiologist, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, 2022-present
Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa
Co-Director, Cardiac MRI, University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Director, Rare Cardiac Conditions Centre, University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Board member, Canadian Cardiac Oncology Network
Past Positions/Appointments:
Professor and Cardiologist, University of Alberta, 2004-2022
Past Director, Residency Training Adult Cardiology, University of Alberta, 2009-2017
Associate Director and Competence Committee Chair, Residency Training Adult Cardiology, University of Alberta, 2021-2022
Clinical Director, Edmonton Cardio-Oncology program
Past President, Canadian Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance
Clinical and Academic Interests:
Prevention and treatment of chemotherapy related cardiotoxicity
Advanced cardiac imaging (MRI and echo)
Heart Failure/Amyloidosis/Sarcoidosis
Post-COVID syndrome
Medical Education
Recreational Activities:
Ice Hockey
Cross-country skiing
Cycling
Dr. Kareem Morant is an Echocardiographer and Assistant Professor at North York General Hospital (NYGH) in Toronto, ON. After completing Cardiology training at University of Toronto, he completed his Advanced Echocardiography Fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN.
Currently, he is the Director of the Heart Function Clinic at NYGH and is a member of the Transcatheter Heart Valve Team at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.
Dr. Morant’s areas of interest include Imaging, Valvular Heart Disease, Heart Failure and A-TTR Cardiomyopathy, where he has a particular interest in how it effects the Canadian Black population. Furthermore, he enjoys teaching and mentoring trainees of all levels, and is passionate about advocating for improving diversity and inclusivity in medicine.
Lawrence Lau, MD, is a cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Lau graduated from the University of Manitoba, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree with distinction in 2011. He earned his medical degree in 2015 followed by a residency in internal medicine in 2018, also at the University of Manitoba. He then completed a residency in cardiology at the UOHI in 2021, followed by a fellowship in echocardiography at the UOHI in 2022.
Dr. Lau’s research interests include infective endocarditis, echocardiography, and valve disease.
Marie-Josée Blais is Chief Cardiac Sonographer at the Jewish General Hospital, a McGill University affiliated hospital. She graduated as a medical imaging technologist in 1991 and obtained her ARDMS certification in adult and pediatric echocardiography in 1995. She is currently an inspector of the Order of Technologists of Quebec (OTIMRO). She served on the CSE Board of Directors and has lectured at numerous national and international meetings, including the ASE and CSE annual meetings.
Her interests include standardization in echocardiography, quality improvement and contrast imaging
Dr. Fine is a heart failure cardiologist and echocardiologist in Calgary (Alberta Canada). He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Cardiac Sciences, Medicine and Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. He is the Clinical Director of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute. He is director of Clinical and Research/Core Echocardiography Laboratories, and co-lead of Heart Failure research program. Dr. Fine has a clinical and research interest in heart failure and infiltrative cardiomyopathies, particularly cardiac amyloidosis and Anderson-Fabry disease, and is Co-Director of the Amyloidosis Program of Calgary and Cardiac Amyloidosis Clinic. He is the co-principal investigator for the Canadian Registry for Amyloidosis Research.
Dr. Sarah Blissett is an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Co-Program Director of Adult Cardiology Subspecialty Training Program, and a Centre Researcher at the Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI)
Following completion of medical school at the University of Toronto, Internal Medicine at University of Toronto and Cardiology at Western University, she completed fellowships in Integrated Cardiac Imaging (Echocardiography and Cardiac MRI, McGill University, Montreal) and Adult Congenital Heart Disease (UCSF, San Francisco). Concurrent to these fellowships, she obtained a Master of Health Professions Education from Maastricht University.
Dr. Blissett's clinical work focuses on cardiac imaging, Adult Congenital Heart Disease and Cardio-Obstetrics. Her academic interests are focused on improving education in Cardiology, particularly in optimizing learning in workplace learning environments
.
Steven Promislow graduated from medical school at the University of Manitoba in 2010 and completed his residency training in internal medicine at the University of Manitoba in 2013. He went on to complete his cardiology residency in 2016 at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, followed by fellowships in both adult echocardiography and cardiac CT/nuclear cardiology. He subsequently joined the Division of Cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute before returning to Winnipeg in 2021 to join WRHA Cardiac Sciences and the Section of Cardiology within the Department of Medicine at the University of Manitoba.
His academic interests lie in multimodality cardiac imaging and their application in clinical practice. He is also actively involved in education at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.