Since its founding in 1990, CRF has established itself at the forefront of cardiovascular medical research and therapeutic development. CRF's programs have focused on advancing angioplasty techniques and technologies while at the same time developing revolutionary devices and protocols to address the dangers of advanced vascular disease. CRF has placed itself at the nexus of academia, the FDA, the biomedical industry, and patient care. It promotes the creation and sharing of expertise in all stages and facets of cardiovascular research.
As part of the Clinical Trials Center (CTC), CRF's Core Laboratories are among the busiest in the world, monitoring or conducting more than 100 clinical trials at any given time. Principal areas of investigation include the Angiographic Core Laboratory, the Intravascular Imaging Core Laboratory, the Multidetector Computed Tomographic Angiography Core Laboratory, the Electrocardiography (ECG) Core Laboratory, and the Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Core Laboratory.
Also as part of the CTC, CRF's Data Center keeps an ongoing database of more than 15,000 active cases, following patients beyond the initial trial period and selection processes. This permits researchers to examine how technologies work in the real world of practicing physicians. CRF's comprehensive experience with multicenter studies extends to its partnerships with the finest centers in the United States and around the world.
The breadth and scope of CRF's research is evident in the prodigious contributions that CRF's faculty has made to the interventional cardiology literature: over 1,000 book chapters, peer-reviewed abstracts, articles and books in the past decade alone.
CRF's close relationship with Columbia University Medical Center and the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapies (CIVT) ensures that patient care and clinical research go hand-in-hand. On one hand, the scientific investigations lead to improved patient care, and on the other hand, actual patient treatment protocols influence the direction, progress, and success of CRF research initiatives.
For a listing of ongoing clinical trials at CIVT, click here.
Along with other symposia and meetings, Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT), is the premier interventional cardiology conference that draws over 10,000 participants from around the world. Here, an internationally recognized faculty gather, in the words of Jeffrey W. Moses, MD, "to collaborate with each other, inspire and learn from each other, and—most importantly—advance the efficacy of patient care in the treatment of adverse cardiovascular conditions."
