Portal Hypertension SIG: Critical Review of Invasive Interventions in Patients with Portal Hypertension

Juan Carlos Garcia-Pagán is a Senior consultant in Hepatology and Head of the Hepatic Hemodynamic section at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Spain and Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona.

He is currently sharing its clinical activity in the hospital with its clinical and basic research at the Institut de Investigacións Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS) and is also member of the Centro para Investigación Biomédica en Red de enfermedades hepaticas y digestivas (CIBEREHD).  The main research of Interest are: Pathophysiology and treatment of portal hypertension in cirrhosis and of vascular disorders of the liver. He is currently the chair of the EASL-VALDIG (Vascular liver disease group) .

Zachary Henry, MD is a transplant hepatologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. He works in both the general hepatology and liver transplant clinics and has a special interest in the management of gastric variceal bleeding. He trained in the endoscopic management of gastric varices under Dr. Stephen Caldwell at the University of Virginia and has maintained a strong multi-disciplinary clinical practice in this field. In addition, he has published multiple articles on the management of gastric varices including a recent clinical practice update for the AGA.

Puneeta Tandon, MD, FRCPC is an associate professor of medicine, co-director of the Cirrhosis Care Clinic and transplant hepatologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She completed her internal medicine, hepatology and clinical epidemiology training at the University of Alberta with additional training at Yale University and the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.

Dr. Tandon’s clinical practice and research are focused on cirrhosis with research interests including cirrhosis related complications, malnutrition, frailty, exercise therapy, palliative care and integrative health approaches such as meditation and behavior change techniques. It is her career goal to provide wholistic, interdisciplinary, patient-centered care through evidence, education, empowerment, engagement and teamwork.

Riad Salem, MD, MBA is Professor of Radiology, Surgery and Medicine, Vice-Chair, Image-Guided Therapy and Section Chief, Interventional Radiology in the Department of Radiology at Northwestern University in Chicago. His areas of interest include the use of image-guided techniques for the treatment of liver cancer including chemoembolisation, bland embolization and radioembolisation. He is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, where he was recipient of the Wood Gold Medal and J Francis Award in Internal Medicine. He then completed his residency in Washington DC, a fellowship in interventional radiology (University of Pennsylvania), as well as a Master’s in Business Administration (Finance).

Dr. Salem is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society and a Fellow of the Society of Interventional Radiology. He has delivered >800 lectures nationally and internationally, and written extensively on the subject of interventional oncology and portal hypertension (TIPS), with over 370 publications, 28000 citations, and an h index of 92. His current research focus on: 1) hepatocellular carcinoma advances in minimally invasive therapies, 2) imaging methodologies following locoregional treatment, and 3) treatment of portal vein thrombosis in cirrhotics and non-cirrhotic using novel TIPS techniques, with conversion of untransplantable patients to transplant candidacy. He serves as PI of two, international, randomized phase III trials involving sorafenib +/- Y90 in HCC (STOP-HCC) and chemotherapy +/- Y90 in CRC (EPOCH); EPOCH was the first large-scale RCT to meet its endpoints in the field of interventional oncology. He was also lead investigator in LEGACY, the pivotal trial that lead to the FDA’s first PMA device approval.

Dr. Saad is a Physician of 20 years and is internationally recognized for liver disease including liver transplantation, hepatobiliary disease and portal hypertension. He has over 240 publications and over 70 book chapters and is an author of 4 books. He completed his residency at the University of Rochester, New York and his Fellowship in Vascular & Interventional Radiology at Mallinckrodt Institute of radiology, Washington University, St. Louis. He practiced Interventional Radiology at the University of Rochester and University of Virginia, where he was the program director of the Vascular & Interventional Radiology Fellowship, before coming to the University of Michigan in 2013. Dr. Saad is active in the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) and was awarded the SIR-Fellowship in 2010. He served as the Chairman of the SIR Standards of Practice Committee from 2011 through to 2014.