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Return home to Lebanon.

After spending several years conducting innovative techniques and procedures in prestigious European heart centres, Dr Antonio H. Frangieh has returned to his home country of Lebanon to help develop a new structural heart disease program in Beirut. Cardiologists at the Hotel-Dieu de France, Saint-Joseph University Medical Center, in Beirut already regularly carry out procedures such as MitraClip and left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) and expect to reach their first 100 transcatheter aortic valve implantations (TAVI) soon. Now, explains Dr Frangieh, the goal is to transform the structural heart disease program into a centre of excellence, performing advanced and complex interventional procedures and acting as a teaching and training centre for the Middle East. Having undergone training in Zurich and worked at the German Heart Center in Munich, Antonio Frangieh is now back where his medical training began, with the goal to take cardiac care onto a new level for the people of Beirut and Lebanon. Born in Zgharta, a city in the northern part of Lebanon (in 1985), he grew up in a family with no medical background before moving to Beirut when he was 18 to study in the Faculty of Medicine of SaintJoseph University (one of the oldest academic institutions in the Middle East, founded in 1883). His interest in becoming a cardiologist developed at an early stage of his studies in a region with high incidence of coronary artery disease and prevalence of familial hypercholesterolaemia. Antonio Frangieh received his medical degree in 2010 and did his internal medicine and cardiology Fellowships at the Hotel-Dieu de France, Saint-Joseph University Medical Center, followed by a Fellowship in interventional cardiology (2014–2016) with Professor Thomas F. Lüscher and his team at the Andreas Grüntzig Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at the University Heart Center Zurich and Zurich University Hospital. In 2014, he was awarded a prestigious Swiss Federal post-doctoral excellency scholarship that provided him with full tuition for training in Switzerland, allowing him in addition to complete additional medical training focused on Structural Heart Interventions including TAVI, MitraClip, and LAAO at the German Heart Center in Munich. Along the way, he was influenced by a number of people, including members of the interventional team at Hotel-Dieu de France Hospital who trained in institutions in France and the USA and returned to Lebanon to build one of the first cath-labs in the country, performing a high number of procedures, participating in several studies, and presenting at major European and American meetings. Dr Albert Markus Kasel at the German Heart Center was a significant influence, as well as ‘a great teacher and friend’ and Professor Lüscher gave him the opportunity to participate in multi-centre studies, receive high-level training and reach his goals. Research interests for Antonio Frangieh, who is an interventional/attending cardiologist and responsible for the Structural Heart Program for the Cardiology Department and Heart Center at HotelDieu de France, focus on structural heart disease interventions. While in Zurich he was involved in research projects on acute coronary syndromes, bioresorbable scaffolds, Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, MitraClip, and LAAO, publishing more than 30 papers as first author or co-author in medical journals. ‘My stay in the University Hospital Zurich with Professor Lüscher was a great opportunity for me to “boost” my research work, in addition to receiving excellent training in CardioPulse 2339