PHOENIX (May 20, 2023) – The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) announced its 2023 Master Interventionalists of SCAI (MSCAI) designation recipients during the SCAI 2023 Scientific Sessions in Phoenix.

The MSCAI designation is awarded to individuals who have demonstrated excellence in invasive/interventional cardiology over the course of their career and for their commitment to the highest levels of clinical care, innovation, publication, and teaching.

This year’s MSCAI designations were awarded to the following group of outstanding interventionalists:

David T. Balzer, MD, MSCAI

Dr. Balzer received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He attended medical school at St. Louis University School of Medicine and did his pediatrics residency at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital. He was a pediatrician in the Air Force for three years following his residency. He then did a cardiology fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine. He has been an attending physician at Washington University School of Medicine/St. Louis Children's Hospital since completion of his fellowship. He is currently Director of the Cardiac Cath Lab at St. Louis Children's Hospital. He has been actively involved in teaching and research for 30 years and has been institutional principal investigator on numerous multi-center device trials.

Ronald P. Caputo, MD, MSCAI

Dr. Caputo graduated from Georgetown University with a BS in Biology and a minor in English and subsequently graduated from Georgetown University Medical School. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and stayed on as Chief Medical Resident. Following this, he moved on to the Harvard/Beth Israel Cardiology program completing general and interventional cardiology training. He was privileged to work there with Drs Donald Baim, William Grossman, Richard Kuntz, David Cohen, Joseph Carrozza, Mark Josephson, and many others - all of whom motivated him to strive for excellence in the field. Moving on to a busy clinical interventional cardiology practice with St. Joseph's Hospital Cardiology Associates, he helped pioneer radial arterial access, doing his first radial cases in 1997. He developed a clinical research program that was proud to participate in several seminal clinical device studies, and he is an author of more than 90 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He moved on to start a cardiovascular service line at Physician's Regional Medical Center in Naples, FL helping to initiate cardiothoracic surgery, high-risk PCI, structural heart and PERT programs, and clinical research. Interest in new devices prompted the formation of two medical device companies (AngioLink and Transluminal Technologies), within which he has several issued patents and two medical devices that have received regulatory approval. He is a strong advocate for SCAI, having served on the Board of Trustees, as the Chairman of the Membership Committee, and as a member of the Industrial Relations Committee for many years.

Shao-Liang Chen, MD, MSCAI

Dr. Shao-Liang Chen, MD, PhD, is an interventional cardiologist in Nanjing First Hospital (Center of Excellence by European Heart Journal), Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China. Dr. Chen has published 300+ original papers and is highly cited clinician-scientist in China. Coronary intervention (particularly left main and bifurcation stenting, intravascular imaging, and physiological assessment, etc.), pulmonary arterial hypertension, and biological molecular science are Dr. Chen's major, with a total of PCI cases > 10,000 and annual PCI number > 500 cases.

Tarek Helmy, MD, MSCAI

Dr. Tarek Helmy is the Division Chief of Cardiology. He completed his interventional fellowship training from New England Medical Center, Tufts University. He has been on the faculty at Emory University School of Medicine, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and Saint Louis School of Medicine. His interests include complex coronary intervention, CTO and structural heart disease. His research interests are in coronary physiology.

Eric Horlick, MD, MSCAI

Dr. Horlick is an adult interventional cardiologist specializing in structural and adult congenital heart disease at the Toronto General Hospital. Eric completed medical school, internal medicine and cardiology at McGill University and then did fellowship training in PCI and ACHD intervention at the Toronto General Hospital and never left. He was "structural" long before this name was used commonly. He was named the Inaugural Peter Munk Chair in Structural Heart Disease in 2015 and rose to the rank of Professor of Medicine in 2018. Eric has trained 32 fellows in structural and congenital heart disease from six continents and many more angioplasty fellows. He has mentored the research of graduate students, cardiology residents, medical residents, and students. Over a dozen of his undergraduate research students would go on to attend medical school. He has over 190 publications and has given over 400 invited lectures internationally. Eric worked with SCAI colleagues on the Fellows Courses and as a representative on multiple multi-society documents. Eric co-founded the Canadian Network for Adult Congenital Heart Disease Intervention Research, is a CIHR-funded investigator and clinical trialist.

Alexandra J. Lansky, MD, MSCAI

Alexandra J. Lansky, MD, is Professor of Medicine in the section of Cardiology at the Yale School of Medicine and a practicing cardiologist at Yale-New Haven Hospital, in New Haven, CT. From 2004 to 2010, Dr. Lansky was Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Director of Clinical Services at the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy, a practicing cardiologist at New York-Presbyterian, and Chief Scientific Officer of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation Clinical Trials Center. Prior to that she was an interventional cardiologist on faculty at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, and at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, NY. She has dedicated her career to leading clinical and angiographic evaluations of more than 500 clinical trials in a broad range of ischemic cardiovascular therapeutic areas, including pharmacologic and interventional device trials, many of which are landmark trials in the field and/or leading to FDA approval in the United States. She has served as the principal investigator on numerous national and international imaging studies, device, DES, and neuroprotection trials. Dr. Lansky has authored and coauthored over 500 academic peer-reviewed manuscripts in the fields of interventional cardiology, angiography, and women’s cardiovascular health. She chaired the American Heart Association Statement on Interventions in Women and most recently the Academic Research Consortium defining Neurologic Endpoints in clinical cardiovascular trials.

Dr. Lansky has been recognized for her clinical research contributions with several prestigious awards including Master of Arts Privatim from Yale University in 2017; Top Doctors in Connecticut in 2017, Thompson Reuter’s 2014 and 2016 “Most influential Scientific Minds for Clinical Medicine”; 2012 Wenger Award of Clinical Excellence in Women’s health, Visiting Professor at Fu Wai Hospital, Bejing,China, and Honorary Professor, University College London.

Dr. Lansky is board certified in cardiovascular diseases. A graduate of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, VA, she received her residency training in internal medicine, cardiology, and interventional cardiology at Washington Hospital Center, Washington DC. Dr. Lansky is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. 

Debabrata Mukherjee, MD, MSCAI

Debabrata Mukherjee, MD, MS, is a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas. Before this, he held the position of the Gill Foundation Professor of Interventional Cardiology, and the Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the University of the Kentucky and the Director of the Peripheral Interventional Program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Mukherjee completed his residency training in internal medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Subsequently, he completed a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology also at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Dr. Mukherjee also completed a Masters in Clinical Research (MS) at the University of Michigan and a Certificate in Business Administration at the University Of Kentucky Gatton College Of Business.

Dr. Mukherjee has received the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Career Development Grant, the Joseph Cash Memorial Award for excellence in Health outcome research, and the Cardiovascular Center McKay Research Grant for Peripheral Arterial Disease. He has been named as one of the Best Doctors in America for several years. Dr Mukherjee has been an invited lecturer at several major national and international meetings, has authored over 600 publications with an H-index of 80 (Google Scholar), edited 19 textbooks on cardiovascular diseases, and has written more than 100 textbook chapters. He serves on several journal editorial boards and is an Associate Editor for Cardiosource (ACC.org). He is a long-standing fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the Society for Vascular Medicine & Biology, and very importantly, the Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions. In 2020, Dr. Mukherjee received the American College of Cardiology Distinguished Fellowship Award for his extensive work as a clinician, educator, and scientist. 

Samir B. Pancholy, MD, MSCAI

Dr. Samir B. Pancholy practices in Scranton, PA, and serves as the Founding Program Director of the fellowship program in cardiovascular diseases at The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, as Professor of Medicine at the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, and as Director of Interventional Cardiology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Wilkes-Barre, PA.

He earned his medical degree from BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad, India, and completed his residency at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY. In addition, Dr. Pancholy completed fellowships in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology at the Presbyterian Medical Center and Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.

While practicing in a community setting, Dr. Pancholy has authored over 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts in reputed international journals and several textbooks. His pragmatic research questions, passion, and energy have motivated several like-minded investigators globally, resulting in several practice-changing randomized trials, providing foundational evidence that has led to the development of best practice recommendations for transradial procedures. He has developed multiple techniques to improve procedural safety and success while performing catheter-based procedures. He has invented several medical devices, some FDA-approved and used in cardiac catheterization laboratories worldwide. He holds more than 70 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

He is the Founding Co-Chair of the Transradial Working Group and Vascular Access Working Group of SCAI, credited with a successful and systematic campaign to increase the adoption of transradial access in the US and globally. He is the founding chair of the SCAI-TRIP (Transradial Intervention Program), providing educational programs in transradial access. In addition, he is the Founding Co-Director of the Transradial Interventional Course (TRICO) offered annually in Ahmedabad, India. since 2006, providing a live demonstration platform portraying state-of-the-art PCI techniques, with an emphasis on transradial access.

About SCAI

The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) is a non-profit professional association with over 4,500 members representing interventional cardiologists and cardiac catheterization teams in the United States. SCAI promotes excellence in interventional cardiovascular medicine for both adults and children through education, representation, and the advancement of quality standards to enhance patient care. Follow @SCAI on Twitter for the latest heart health news.