News Archive

Prize Honors Superior Operator Skills and Leadership in Interventional Cardiovascular Medicine

NEW YORK – February 25, 2023 – The TCT Geoffrey O. Hartzler Master Operator Award will be presented to William L. Lombardi, MD during Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT), the annual scientific symposium of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF). TCT will take place October 23-26, 2023, in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. The award is given each year to a physician who has advanced the field of interventional cardiovascular medicine through technical excellence and leadership.

A world-renowned expert in complex coronary disease therapies, Dr. Bill Lombardi has been one of the highest volume complex PCI and chronic total occlusion (CTO) operators in the world for over a decade. He is deeply engaged in developing novel CTO techniques and technologies and is noted for helping to create and educate on a hybrid algorithm that facilitates successful, reproducible outcomes in CTO and complex lesion percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Dr. Lombardi has also been involved with more than 20 new technologies that improve PCI, including guide wires, microcatheters, specialty balloons, and novel approaches to reduce radiation and orthopedic injuries to operators.  

“Bill is a passionate, intuitive, and creative master interventional operator, and a dedicated mentor who has devoted his career to improving and refining CTO and complex coronary techniques and technologies,” said Martin B. Leon, MD, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of CRF. “As a humanist and clinician in his daily practice, he’s always striving to improve his skills and methods to perform safer and more efficient procedures, so that patients benefit from the best available treatments.”

Dr. Lombardi completed his medical degree at Tulane Medical School in New Orleans and went on to the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, for his internal medicine residency and fellowships in cardiology, heart failure/cardiac transplant, and interventional cardiology. He is board certified in interventional cardiology and cardiovascular disease by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He continues to innovate at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle as a clinical professor of medicine and director of Complex Coronary Disease Therapies. Dr. Lombardi is an author of more than 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, nine book chapters on CTO-PCI, has delivered more than 200 invited lectures, and has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on more than 30 clinical trials.

“One of Bill’s most unique attributes is his ability to self-reflect, particularly his continuous and genuine desire to always improve his skills despite being considered ‘the gold standard’ for technical expertise in CTO PCI,” said Ajay J. Kirtane, MD, SM, TCT Program Director. “It is this passion, along with his desire to educate and promote others, that sets him apart. I have personally drawn strong inspiration from his mentorship of others, most notably his deliberate and steadfast efforts to promote women in our field.”

“Bill Lombardi is an inspiring mentor and an exceptional teacher who truly embodies the spirit of this award,” added Juan F. Granada, MD, CRF’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “His dedication to his patients and devotion to training the next generation of interventional cardiologists is unparalleled and will have a lasting impact on the field for years to come.”

Previous recipients of the TCT Geoffrey O. Hartzler Master Operator Award include Eberhard Grube, MD;  Hideo Tamai, MD; Osamu Katoh, MD; Takahiko Suzuki, MD; Horst Sievert, MD, PhD; Barry D. Rutherford, MD; Bernhard Meier, MD; Marie Claude Morice, MD; Paul S. Teirstein, MD; Patrick L. Whitlow, MD; Alec Vahanian, MD; John G. Webb, MD; Shigeru Saito, MD; and Jean Fajadet, MD.