This book is a fully updated and revised second edition of a highly successful text in which a new concept of knowledge mining, based on explication and transfer of interventional knowledge of experts, has been implemented. The dedicated training program that is set out will serve the needs of all interventional operators, whether cardiologists, vascular surgeons, vascular specialists, or radiologists, enabling them to achieve a consistent expert level across the entire broad spectrum of catheter-based interventions.

Operator skills - and in particular decision-making and strategic skills - are the most critical factors for the outcome of catheter-based cardiovascular interventions. Currently, such skills are commonly developed by the empirical trial and error method only. The explicit teaching, training, and learning approach adopted in this book permits the rapid transfer of interventional knowledge and enables individual operators to negotiate steep learning curves and acquire complex skills in a highly efficient manner. It will thereby offer invaluable assistance in meeting successfully the challenges of modern cardiovascular care.

Prof. Peter Lanzer got his medical degree at the Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg/Breisgau and trained subsequently in Internal Medicine at the Westphalian Wilhelms University Münster. Subsequently, Dr. Lanzer worked as research fellow at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University California San Francisco, USA and continued then his training as a fellow in clinical cardiology at the University of California in San Francisco. Dr. Lanzer completed his fellowships and training in interventional cardiology and vascular medicine at the St. Vincent's Hospital, Indianapolis and at the Charite, Berlin. He is currently Director of the Department of Internal medicine and Chief of staff, Cardiovascular Medicine, Teaching Hospital, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He is board-certified specialist for Internal medicine, Cardiology, Vascular medicine, Interventional Cardiovascular medicine and Cardiac Magnetic Resonance. His professional interest has always spanned wealth of topics in interventional cardiology and interventional vascular medicine with emphasis on cognitive skills and knowledge transfer. Peter has also a longstanding interest in vascular biology with a focus on vascular calcifications.