Dr Geza Fontos discusses the importance of sharing course knowledge with young doctors

Dr. Geza Fontos talks about the things that teaching transcatheter therapies has taught him with Dr. Ajeet Bana, at the first edition of the Sentient Summit for adult structural heart & transcatheter therapies conducted on 8th & 9th of June 2019.
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Interview transcript:
Dr. Ajeet Bana: Good evening everyone. First of all, I would like to introduce you to Dr. Geza Fontos. He is one of the pioneers of transcatheter therapy in Europe, as well as in the world. He has so many procedures to his credit, that now he has been rated as number one of one of the first few operators in the world. He has been proctored to various countries in Europe and in India. And now the trained doctors by Dr. Geza Fantos are doing this procedure and training others also. So, Dr. Geza Fontos, what do you think about this Sentient Summit going on in Chennai today? And what do you feel that… how the meeting is going on, how the people are participating in this?
Dr. Geza Fontos: I have to participate at least one to two meetings each month. We have a lot of duties to go all around the world. But I feel that the Sentient meeting is a unique initiative in several ways. First of all, it's a local meeting, which is... which I think is going to be very famous for the warm hospitality and the professionalism in sense of organizing the meeting. The environment is just perfect for having a meeting.
And I think that the most unique feature of this conference is that it tends to be really multidisciplinary meeting in the field. Usually, we have meetings for interventional cardiologists, for cardiac surgeons and anesthetists, imaging people, and this meeting tries to integrate the teams, which is, in my opinion, the most important in the field of structural heart disease.
Dr. Bana: Yeah, great. Absolutely great. And you have been to India so many times. You have proctored at so many places and hospitals and you have attended various meetings in India related to transcatheter therapy. What do you think this technology or this therapy is going to be in India? Because we in India are different from the European countries, and this is a vast country. And our disease profile is, again different. And practices are again different than the European countries. What do you think, what is the take, how this therapy is going to be here in India?
Dr. Fontos: But just to go back to the beginning of your question, I'm really lucky enough to have the possibility to come to India several times. I started proctoring these procedures about five years ago. And since then, I've come back at least 10 times a year. I think this technology has a great future in India. Basically you have a huge number of population. And even inside of this population, the proportion of heart disease patient is, I guess higher than in Europe, for example. So, there is a huge unmet need for the structural occupations.
I also see that the development of cardiac surgery in India is just on the top of the herd, you do procedures that nobody else in the world could do. But still there are patients who are not good candidates for cardiac surgery or heart surgery. So, I think we have to go forward for this patient population.
Dr. Bana: So, you have told me say you move around the world, maybe twice a month, sometimes, as well as you operate to do so many procedures every week, every month and go to so many places. What is the thing? What motivates you to do all this? What motivates you to teach others for this procedure?
Dr. Fontos: It is a very good question. We went doing procedures outside of the country several years back, but we have a point, then everything has changed. And we started to do local trainings, we call it team approach trainings in our hospitals. And there we invite 10 to 15 attendants from all over the world and seeing how enthusiastic those physicians are in learning the procedures who have no access to that. It’s just amazing.
And since then, we decided to do also local fellowship programs in our hospital. So, each year we have at least two fellows, and I have learned a lot during my Indian trips as well, because you and your colleagues had such a huge experience in other fields as well like coronaries, like communication closures. And I always pick something up and take with myself home to improve our hospital.
Dr. Bana: So I think with your conversation, I got to know that it’s lot more to give and you also take something out of Indian practice of cardiology. Thank you very much Dr. Fontos for sharing your experience in your views with us today in Chennai. Thanks a lot.
Dr. Fontos: It was my pleasure. Thank you.