Mastering the Mitral Valve: A Popular Course Goes Virtual This December

For the past few years, New York-area physicians have had convenient access to well-received Cleveland Clinic CME courses on heart valve care held in central Manhattan over a Friday and Saturday in early December. While the in-person version of the 2020 installment of that series, “Mastering the Mitral Valve: A Case-Based Approach,” has been canceled due to the pandemic, the course is still very much alive and will be available on December 4 and 5 to a larger audience than ever via livestream with complimentary registration.

“The silver lining of having to forgo the in-person offering of this popular course is that we can now extend its reach to many more physicians and other providers around the world — and with no registration fee,” says course co-director A. Marc Gillinov, MD, Chair of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Cleveland Clinic.

Briskly paced, highly case-based

Across a full day on Friday, Dec. 4, and the morning of Saturday, Dec. 5, 18 mitral valve experts from Cleveland Clinic and several other leading U.S. institutions will bring participants fully up to speed on contemporary management of mitral valve disease.

The livestreamed course is briskly paced — nearly all presentations are in focused 15-minute segments — and decidedly case-based. In fact, two of the six broad topical sessions are devoted solely to complex cases. Three of the other four sessions — on basic to advanced imaging, surgery and surgical decision-making, and new insights into mitral valve disease pathophysiology — feature a generous offering of cases throughout to guide real-world application of the latest evidence and advances. An additional session covering transcatheter mitral valve repair and replacement is less case-based but is rich with updates on new technologies and ongoing clinical trials.

“This program is designed to provide a practical, highly case-based approach to both the fundamentals of mitral valve disease care and cutting-edge approaches,” says course co-director Milind Desai, MD, Director of Operations in Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. “We will focus on applying recent insights to specific patient populations and treatment dilemmas.”

A sampling of presentation titles gives a glimpse of the course’s practicality:

• How to Use Hemodynamic Measurements in Management of Patients with Mitral Regurgitation (MR)
• Irreparable Mitral Valve: Which Prosthesis to Choose?
• Intraoperative Imaging and Decision-Making in the OR: Problems to Recognize
• Surgical Treatment of Ischemic MR: Repair or Replace?
• Patient Selection for MitraClip in Heart Failure with Functional MR: Using the COAPT Criteria

Attention to collaboration, special topics

“Another focus is defining the role of transcatheter and surgical therapies, with an emphasis on the collaborative nature of these procedures across many cardiovascular disciplines,” notes course co-director Samir Kapadia, MD, Cleveland Clinic’s Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine. Updates will be provided on topics such as valve-in-valve/valve-in-ring procedures and appropriate patients for new trials of transcatheter mitral valve replacement, often from experts leading the trials or pioneering the techniques discussed.

The course’s comprehensive nature allows for exploration of many special topics in relation to mitral valve disease, including anticoagulation, concomitant tricuspid valve disease, strategies to address atrial fibrillation during mitral valve surgery, radiation-related disease and reoperative mitral valve surgery, among others.

“Attendees of our past December courses in New York on mastering aortic and mitral valve disease can expect the same mix of expert updates, illuminating case studies and spirited panel discussions from this year’s livestream offering,” says course co-director Lars Svensson, MD, PhD, Chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute. “Despite the circumstances for needing to go virtual, we are excited to be offering this year’s course to many more colleagues who can participate in and learn from it.”

Full details and registration are at ccfcme.org/mitralmasters.

This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.