June 8th will mark our 12th case. Over 12,000 people from 54 countries have visited our CCC Live website. I have received so many emails! People are happy that we have started this educational live symposium, and now, they can even download slides.

   For our 12th case, we kept the last 5 minutes for a celebration and thanks to the cath lab staff and all involved — most importantly, thanks to our viewers. The president and COO of Mount Sinai Hospital, Wayne E. Keathley, will be joining us for this celebration of our first-year anniversary.

   In June, HMP Communications managed our annual symposium (Live Complex Coronary & Vascular Cases, June 16-18) in New York. We put all 12 cases on a flash drive. Each case in its entirety (a full one hour), with lectures and all the slides, was provided to the symposium registrants.

Can you talk about the range of cases that you’ve performed?

   The majority of the cases have included either a left main or total occlusion, and calcific arteries. We have done 5 unprotected left main arteries, 5 calcified arteries and 3 chronic total occlusions (CTO). All with no complications and great success, except one CTO case.

Has doing these live cases changed anything in your thinking?

   Yes. We have a lot of experience doing live cases at Mount Sinai cath lab. Not only have we been doing these type of cases at our annual symposium, held every year for the last 12 years (over those two days we do 22 live cases), but I would say that performing cases live encourages us to consider how we can make procedures simple, so that people can adopt them to their practice. The questions that are asked live by viewers — why are we using one wire versus another, for example — have actually led us to change some of our practices as well. Do you put two stents versus one stent? People are asking very appropriate questions, leading to very good discussion. Overall, I would say that the educational experience is just tremendous.

What do you have planned for the future?

   I have received at least four requests to make our live case a twice a month, if not every week, event. This will require additional resources and commitment, so I cannot address it at this point, but we have two goals for the immediate future. First, we are working to permit viewers of our archived cases at ccclivecases.org the option of downloading the entire case before watching it. This way they are not dependent on the strength or stability of their internet connection to view the case. Second, in May, we made it possible for people to log in and watch the case through their iPad or iPhone. This has been a great success. People can be riding (as a passenger!) in a car or train, and just watch the case through their iPhone. We are very happy to be able to offer this type of access.

   In the future, we do hope to offer cases more frequently, more than one time per month. All the cases are archived, so people can watch at their own convenience. Finally, we hope to provide our cases in some different languages. People have actually asked if it could be in Spanish, Japanese and so forth. We are looking into how we could make that available.

Internally, how have the live cases affected the cath lab overall?

   Everyone participates in the cath lab or watches while it’s live each month. We do have additional educational activities for our staff, but this supersedes any educational activity we have done in the past. We do not do cases for that hour, so that the cath lab has a little delayed start, but we are making a difference by providing education.

Join Dr. Sharma and Dr. Annapoorna Kini for the next two live cases, July 20th, 8-9 am, and August 17th, 8-9 am, at www.ccclivecases.org.

More information is available about Mount Sinai’s annual meeting, the Live Symposium of Complex Coronary & Vascular Cases, held each June in New York, at: www.cccsymposium.org

Dr. Sharma can be contacted at samin.sharma@mountsinai.org

BONUS FEATURE!

Cath Lab Digest caught up with Sameer Mehta, MD, FACC, MBA, Voluntary Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, Course Director, LUMEN. Dr. Mehta is the moderator of the live case series. He shares some of his insights and what he sees ahead.

Why is this webcast unique?

I think we have several concepts here that make this presentation extremely useful for viewers. Dr. Sharma delivers an outstanding didactic that is replete with all the basic knowledge that is needed to make critical decisions about the particular case. It also reviews pertinent literature and the latest clinical trials and PCI guidelines. We then demonstrate a genuinely complex procedure with simultaneous moderation and answer to all online questions. There are always significant take-home messages that are emphasized. All the questions asked by the viewers are compiled after the transmission and meticulously answered. Most viewers go back subsequently to the archived session and retrieve the entire case.

Where do you perceive the webcast will lead?

I sincerely believe that the ccclivecases.org webcast is a game-changer and a forerunner to Interventional Cardiology CME. I think there will be so many interesting variations of this that will emerge that will greatly enhance the viewers experience and bring quality PCI education to your environment without the time and effort of going to meetings and symposia. In this regard, having an interactive media to demonstrate PCI skills is novel and promising. We have so far had viewers from more than 30 countries – I think this will become even more global soon.

Is the ccclivecases.org a good venue for new technology to emerge and be shown?

Indeed, this is one of the aims, the challenge of course is to maintain an unbiased interaction that remains free from conflict of interest.

What enhancements are you looking into for the transmission?

Every session that we have done, we have tried to improvise and become more efficient. HD transmission will be the next improvement. Already the iPhone live-streaming is becoming promising. Our technical team continues to provide great suggestions to take this initiative forward and I think we can expect several new features in the near future.

What part of the webcast do you enjoy most?

Mine is a very unique role that I am enjoying and learning about. During my college years, I produced several TV programs and that experience is coming in very useful. It is fascinating multi-tasking – moderating a case, writing in replies to numerous questions and filtering the important ones for active discussion. During this process, I am constantly striving to maintain rhythm and equilibrium to enable orderly performance of complex coronary interventions and providing quality education.

Dr. Mehta can be contacted at mehtas@bellsouth.net.