Seventy fellows and early-career physicians shared their most challenging and interesting cases at CVI 2025 in Austin, TX this past July in a competition for a $1000 prize and an invitation to serve as faculty for CVI 2026.
They competed in three main categories; Coronary, Peripheral, and Structural Heart, with new sub-categories of Aortic and Vascular Surgery.
After eight rounds of semi-finals on Thursday and Friday of the conference, faculty panels chose eight finalists to compete on the last day of the conference. There were also eight runner ups in each category who would compete if the first place finalist in their round could not.
The Finalists and Runner ups and their cases were:
Coronary:
Round 1:
Finalist: Kyeeun Park, MD, Right Atrial Compression from Coronary Artery Perforation in a Post-CABG Patient Managed with Transhepatic Pericardiocentesis
Runner up: Nick Williford, MD, Coils and Coronaries
Round 2:
Finalist: Ahmed Elborae, MD, All roads lead to Rome
Runner up: Subhabrata Dutta, MBBS, A Balloon with a Mind of Its Own
Round 3:
Finalist: Cyrus Munguti, MD, Navigating the Unknown: Chronic Total Occlusion of an Anomalous Right Coronary Artery
Runner up: Enrique Rodriguez-Paz, MD, Aneurysm PCI and Coiling
Round 4:
Finalist: Mohammed Dabbagh, MD, The Inaccessible CTO
Runner up: Kishor Khanal, MD, What don’t you see?
Peripheral:
Round 1:
Finalist: Stephen John, MD, Trapping the thrombi in transit
Runner up: Markz Sinurat, MD, Customized Fenestrated EVAR in Juxtarenal AAA with no proximal landing zone
Round 2:
Finalist: Mustafa Kursat Tigen, MD, Total Percutaneous Restoration of Central Nervous System Flow in a Patient with Takayasu Arteritis
Runner up: Joel Hlavaty, MD, Endovascular Caval Reconstruction for Congenital Inferior Vena Cava Atresia
Structural Heart:
Round 1:
Finalist: Sergio Mellado Flores, MD, Complex Large Post-Infarct Ventricular Septal Defect – The Plug and Coil Technique
Runner up: Haris Patail, MD, Transcatheter Vacuum-Assisted Mass Extraction on a Mitral Bioprosthesis
Round 2:
Finalist: Ahmed Salama, MD, Endgame Odyssey; When All Else Fails
Runner up: Akshay Kamath, MD, The Sacramento TEERDrop
And the winners are:
Coronary: Mohammed Dabbagh, MD
Peripheral: Stephen John, MD
Structural: Sergio Mellado Flores, MD
Watch all the finalists present there cases in the Case Competition Finals (links above will jump directly to the winners’ presentations):
Submissions for the CVI 2026 Case Competition open in December 2025. You see more case-based competitive learning webinars in our Interventional Octagon webinar series and submit your cases to compete and win a travel grant to CVI and a cash prize.
