Memories of TCT from the Beginning: Martin B. Leon, MD

San Francisco, CA—Martin B. Leon, MD, founder and chairman emeritus of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation and director and founder of TCT shares his memories of the meeting.  

TCT was started in 1988. That period was the early era of balloon angioplasty at a time when some regional leaders and founders like Andreas Gruentzig, MD, had just passed, and some of the early work done involving live case courses for educating physicians had begun to lapse. At the same time, there was a sudden burst of interest in alternative non-balloon angioplasty devices, but there was no open forum to discuss, review and evaluate many of these proposed new techniques.

I was at the National Institutes of Health at the time and we decided to do a boutique meeting that would reflect some of the origins of angioplasty from the standpoint of using the live case teaching format, but with a little bit more of an academic purpose. At the meeting, we wanted to try to discuss and evaluate some new alternative angioplasty techniques. The idea to start the meeting was in response to this variety of events and was the transition from balloon angioplasty to what we called the ‘new device era’ of interventional cardiology.

Who was first TCT meeting designed to attract?

We thought the meeting would attract the aficionados, people who were interested in the new technology. We thought there would be a lot of engineers, scientists, some industry representatives and the people and physicians who were participating in this new era of device development. For the most part, that was who attended. At the time, we knew there was a gap in terms of having the opportunity to participate in an educational forum in interventional cardiology and we thought high-volume practitioners would gravitate to this meeting because it would give them an opportunity to see these things.

Did you know immediately that the meeting was a success?

It is hard to know immediately if something like this is a success. Some of the cases did not go perfectly, and I always agonize over a case where the outcome is not as expected. That was certainly frustrating, but it gave people a real live understanding of some of the new technology that was becoming available.

Are there any milestones in the meeting’s history that stand out to you? Things you will never forget?

There are probably too many to even comment upon. Certainly, there have been a lot of exciting emotional moments associated with TCT that reflect milestones in the meeting. It was very exciting when we began to honor people with the TCT Career Achievement Award. There are many special people who come to mind who were honorees.

Among the most memorable honorees were: the first honoree, Geoffrey Hartzler, MD; Eduardo Sousa, MD, the first person to put in a coronary stent and a drug eluting stent; and John Simpson, MD, the inventor of the major balloon catheter, the directional atherectomy and over-the-wire balloon technology.

The year that we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first balloon angioplasty with the patient, Dolf Bachmann, who came from Germany to discuss his experiences, was very emotional. Another memorable moment was in 2010 when we did some of the earliest work with transcatheter valve therapy and awarded the Career Achievement Award to Alain G. Cribier, MD, who brought some of the patients treated with this technique.

What do you think the future holds for TCT?

We would like to continue to wave the banner and say that TCT represents an authentic, homegrown but now global experience that services the educational needs of the growing spectrum of people—not just physicians—who are interested and involved in interventional cardiovascular medicine.

Seventy percent of the physician attendees are from outside of the United States. The fact that we have such strong representation, including 90 countries, indicates to me that the meeting’s content resonates with an international audience. That is one of the things that I am most proud of, the fact that we have infiltrated every nook and cranny of the interventional community around the globe.

Looking forward, I hope to have an opportunity to continue to lead some of the academic work done in the field by presenting some of the most controversial and exciting clinical trials. Also, I would like to continue to expose and discuss some of the newest therapies and techniques, an extension of what we began 25 years ago, that will take us into the future. We want to continue to develop and create new ways to treat common diseases using catheter-based treatment.

In addition, we want to be able to continue to develop a faculty of more than 1,000 of the strongest and most influential people in the subspecialty around the world and to count them as our friends, colleagues, supporters and contributors.

Finally, I hope TCT continues to do innovative things from an educational standpoint so that we use TCT not only as a platform for intervention but also as a science project to try to innovatively evolve how we educate physicians.