Professor Marianne Brodmann, one of the first physicians to ever use IVL, is the head of clinical research of the Division of Angiology at the Medical University of Graz, Austria. She’s a board member of the European Union of Medical Specialists and a fellow at the European Society of Cardiology. She served as the president of the Austrian Society of Angiology, a national delegate for the International Union of Angiology, and had been a member of various groups such as ESC Working Group on Aorta & Peripheral Vascular Diseases and Nucleus ÖGIA. With more than 50 international trials under her belt, Prof. Brodmann is still at it, researching, among many topics, anticoagulation, thrombolysis, restenosis, and new technologies in the endovascular field.
Many residents and fellows leave training with a sense that they aren’t fully ready for clinical practice. Do you remember a time when you felt like you weren’t ready for “prime time”? How did you overcome this?
Absolutely, it’s a common experience. Transitioning from university to clinical work is challenging, even if you’ve done clinical work during your studies. You’re expected to transfer your knowledge to the real world, and you’re suddenly responsible for patients in complex technical areas like endovascular procedures. This is when you discover your limits.
You have to start every morning with confidence. Having guidance from mentors and teachers is crucial; they boost your confidence and guide you through difficult moments. I was fortunate to have a mentor who encouraged me to face challenges head-on and tackle the same task day after day but try to do it better. It’s how I overcame the issue of confidence.
You speak on podiums at some of the most renowned interventional conferences across the world. For those that are early in their careers, how would you recommend a younger physician get involved with clinical research with other specialists?
Again, you have to have a mentor. That's the most important thing. Someone who guides and inspires you. Look for someone in your environment who has leadership experience and who can be a friend at the same time—friendship is also very important in these relationships.
For example, I never thought I would be able to do even basic research. But my mentor encouraged me to do both endovascular procedures and research. He pushed me into animal lab studies and taught me to embrace challenges and learn from them. You need to try first to see whether it’s for you, and even if you fail, you’ll know that you’ve tried. Always be open to trying new things.
When you're faced with treating challenging calcified plaque in a vessel, do you have a default protocol or a default algorithm for how you approach the disease?
Yes—especially for calcified vessels, we start by assessing the degree of the calcification. In severe cases, we get access, cross the lesion, and then look to modify calcium using IVL, followed by atherectomy if needed. That’s our first approach. After IVL, if there’s still a degree of stenosis, then we may perform additional atherectomy. If the calcium burden is not severe, we might prep the vessel with a speciality balloon. And if this is not sufficient, then I may opt to accelerate with IVL before the final treatment in the vessel. It’s crucial to accurately identify the level of calcification to choose the right approach.
Tell us about your experience of being one of the first physicians in the world to use IVL.
Yes, Dr. Andrew Holden in New Zealand was the first to use it and I was the second. I’m always interested in first-in-human applications. I guess that comes from my basic research days—I’m really curious about how things work. It’s great to have standard procedures, of course, we need those. But it’s exciting to have something new in your hands and to see if it works. Because if it does work, you can improve patient care. That’s the goal, and that’s what makes it thrilling.
It’s also rewarding to work with the people who’ve invested their life, time away from families, money, effort, and so on into developing technologies. And then when those people are in the cath lab with you, and you can show them it works, that’s a special feeling. It’s amazing to see the spark, the smile, in their eyes. It’s great to be part of that.
When thinking about the business of healthcare, what are 2-3 concepts that you wish you knew earlier on in your career?
With what we know now, there are certainly things I wish I’d known before. Outpatient care is a prime example – moving to that earlier would have saved costs not only in the United States but worldwide. We’re a bit behind in Europe on that shift, but it’s happening. It’s more cost-efficient and better both for the patients and us, the physicians.
Another big thing is awareness regarding all diseases. Not just treating patients at the end stage but focusing on awareness earlier on so that treatment can start sooner and with a better outlook.
The next concept is communication between different specialties, not just sticking to what we know best. If you ask a surgeon whether to cut into someone or not, they’ll likely say yes because it’s what they’ve been trained to do. But when specialists across the board communicate on a single patient's case, they can come up with the best collaborative approach and treatment for the unique individual. Open communication and looking across borders—between vascular surgeons and interventionalists, for example—has accelerated vascular care so much.
Are there a few tips that you can share that have helped you enhance your ability to work in a multidisciplinary fashion?
Some people might disagree—a former boss told me that you always have to secure your ground, for example—but my approach is to be very open and collaborative. If we all open up our perspective a bit, I think we all gain a lot more in the end. We need to work together as vascular surgeons, radiologists, cardiologists, everyone. Yes, it means more work sometimes, but we won’t lose patients; we’ll earn more patients because we send them to each other. The result is better care for the patient.
I actively approach my colleagues in other specialties and say, “Let’s work together.” You might open yourself up to some vulnerability, but ultimately, everyone wins, especially the patient.
I don’t believe in fixed borders around specialties. Our responsibility is providing the best possible care to our patients, and the best way to do that is through collaboration.
Professor Marianne Brodmann, one of the first physicians to ever use IVL, is the head of clinical research of the Division of Angiology at the Medical University of Graz, Austria. She’s a board member of the European Union of Medical Specialists and a fellow at the European Society of Cardiology. She served as the president of the Austrian Society of Angiology, a national delegate for the International Union of Angiology, and had been a member of various groups such as ESC Working Group on Aorta & Peripheral Vascular Diseases and Nucleus ÖGIA. With more than 50 international trials under her belt, Prof. Brodmann is still at it, researching, among many topics, anticoagulation, thrombolysis, restenosis, and new technologies in the endovascular field.
Many residents and fellows leave training with a sense that they aren’t fully ready for clinical practice. Do you remember a time when you felt like you weren’t ready for “prime time”? How did you overcome this?
Absolutely, it’s a common experience. Transitioning from university to clinical work is challenging, even if you’ve done clinical work during your studies. You’re expected to transfer your knowledge to the real world, and you’re suddenly responsible for patients in complex technical areas like endovascular procedures. This is when you discover your limits.
You have to start every morning with confidence. Having guidance from mentors and teachers is crucial; they boost your confidence and guide you through difficult moments. I was fortunate to have a mentor who encouraged me to face challenges head-on and tackle the same task day after day but try to do it better. It’s how I overcame the issue of confidence.
You speak on podiums at some of the most renowned interventional conferences across the world. For those that are early in their careers, how would you recommend a younger physician get involved with clinical research with other specialists?
Again, you have to have a mentor. That's the most important thing. Someone who guides and inspires you. Look for someone in your environment who has leadership experience and who can be a friend at the same time—friendship is also very important in these relationships.
For example, I never thought I would be able to do even basic research. But my mentor encouraged me to do both endovascular procedures and research. He pushed me into animal lab studies and taught me to embrace challenges and learn from them. You need to try first to see whether it’s for you, and even if you fail, you’ll know that you’ve tried. Always be open to trying new things.
When you're faced with treating challenging calcified plaque in a vessel, do you have a default protocol or a default algorithm for how you approach the disease?
Yes—especially for calcified vessels, we start by assessing the degree of the calcification. In severe cases, we get access, cross the lesion, and then look to modify calcium using IVL, followed by atherectomy if needed. That’s our first approach. After IVL, if there’s still a degree of stenosis, then we may perform additional atherectomy. If the calcium burden is not severe, we might prep the vessel with a speciality balloon. And if this is not sufficient, then I may opt to accelerate with IVL before the final treatment in the vessel. It’s crucial to accurately identify the level of calcification to choose the right approach.
Tell us about your experience of being one of the first physicians in the world to use IVL.
Yes, Dr. Andrew Holden in New Zealand was the first to use it and I was the second. I’m always interested in first-in-human applications. I guess that comes from my basic research days—I’m really curious about how things work. It’s great to have standard procedures, of course, we need those. But it’s exciting to have something new in your hands and to see if it works. Because if it does work, you can improve patient care. That’s the goal, and that’s what makes it thrilling.
It’s also rewarding to work with the people who’ve invested their life, time away from families, money, effort, and so on into developing technologies. And then when those people are in the cath lab with you, and you can show them it works, that’s a special feeling. It’s amazing to see the spark, the smile, in their eyes. It’s great to be part of that.
When thinking about the business of healthcare, what are 2-3 concepts that you wish you knew earlier on in your career?
With what we know now, there are certainly things I wish I’d known before. Outpatient care is a prime example – moving to that earlier would have saved costs not only in the United States but worldwide. We’re a bit behind in Europe on that shift, but it’s happening. It’s more cost-efficient and better both for the patients and us, the physicians.
Another big thing is awareness regarding all diseases. Not just treating patients at the end stage but focusing on awareness earlier on so that treatment can start sooner and with a better outlook.
The next concept is communication between different specialties, not just sticking to what we know best. If you ask a surgeon whether to cut into someone or not, they’ll likely say yes because it’s what they’ve been trained to do. But when specialists across the board communicate on a single patient's case, they can come up with the best collaborative approach and treatment for the unique individual. Open communication and looking across borders—between vascular surgeons and interventionalists, for example—has accelerated vascular care so much.
Are there a few tips that you can share that have helped you enhance your ability to work in a multidisciplinary fashion?
Some people might disagree—a former boss told me that you always have to secure your ground, for example—but my approach is to be very open and collaborative. If we all open up our perspective a bit, I think we all gain a lot more in the end. We need to work together as vascular surgeons, radiologists, cardiologists, everyone. Yes, it means more work sometimes, but we won’t lose patients; we’ll earn more patients because we send them to each other. The result is better care for the patient.
I actively approach my colleagues in other specialties and say, “Let’s work together.” You might open yourself up to some vulnerability, but ultimately, everyone wins, especially the patient.
I don’t believe in fixed borders around specialties. Our responsibility is providing the best possible care to our patients, and the best way to do that is through collaboration.
Professor Marianne Brodmann, one of the first physicians to ever use IVL, is the head of clinical research of the Division of Angiology at the Medical University of Graz, Austria. She’s a board member of the European Union of Medical Specialists and a fellow at the European Society of Cardiology. She served as the president of the Austrian Society of Angiology, a national delegate for the International Union of Angiology, and had been a member of various groups such as ESC Working Group on Aorta & Peripheral Vascular Diseases and Nucleus ÖGIA. With more than 50 international trials under her belt, Prof. Brodmann is still at it, researching, among many topics, anticoagulation, thrombolysis, restenosis, and new technologies in the endovascular field.
Many residents and fellows leave training with a sense that they aren’t fully ready for clinical practice. Do you remember a time when you felt like you weren’t ready for “prime time”? How did you overcome this?
Absolutely, it’s a common experience. Transitioning from university to clinical work is challenging, even if you’ve done clinical work during your studies. You’re expected to transfer your knowledge to the real world, and you’re suddenly responsible for patients in complex technical areas like endovascular procedures. This is when you discover your limits.
You have to start every morning with confidence. Having guidance from mentors and teachers is crucial; they boost your confidence and guide you through difficult moments. I was fortunate to have a mentor who encouraged me to face challenges head-on and tackle the same task day after day but try to do it better. It’s how I overcame the issue of confidence.
You speak on podiums at some of the most renowned interventional conferences across the world. For those that are early in their careers, how would you recommend a younger physician get involved with clinical research with other specialists?
Again, you have to have a mentor. That's the most important thing. Someone who guides and inspires you. Look for someone in your environment who has leadership experience and who can be a friend at the same time—friendship is also very important in these relationships.
For example, I never thought I would be able to do even basic research. But my mentor encouraged me to do both endovascular procedures and research. He pushed me into animal lab studies and taught me to embrace challenges and learn from them. You need to try first to see whether it’s for you, and even if you fail, you’ll know that you’ve tried. Always be open to trying new things.
When you're faced with treating challenging calcified plaque in a vessel, do you have a default protocol or a default algorithm for how you approach the disease?
Yes—especially for calcified vessels, we start by assessing the degree of the calcification. In severe cases, we get access, cross the lesion, and then look to modify calcium using IVL, followed by atherectomy if needed. That’s our first approach. After IVL, if there’s still a degree of stenosis, then we may perform additional atherectomy. If the calcium burden is not severe, we might prep the vessel with a speciality balloon. And if this is not sufficient, then I may opt to accelerate with IVL before the final treatment in the vessel. It’s crucial to accurately identify the level of calcification to choose the right approach.
Tell us about your experience of being one of the first physicians in the world to use IVL.
Yes, Dr. Andrew Holden in New Zealand was the first to use it and I was the second. I’m always interested in first-in-human applications. I guess that comes from my basic research days—I’m really curious about how things work. It’s great to have standard procedures, of course, we need those. But it’s exciting to have something new in your hands and to see if it works. Because if it does work, you can improve patient care. That’s the goal, and that’s what makes it thrilling.
It’s also rewarding to work with the people who’ve invested their life, time away from families, money, effort, and so on into developing technologies. And then when those people are in the cath lab with you, and you can show them it works, that’s a special feeling. It’s amazing to see the spark, the smile, in their eyes. It’s great to be part of that.
When thinking about the business of healthcare, what are 2-3 concepts that you wish you knew earlier on in your career?
With what we know now, there are certainly things I wish I’d known before. Outpatient care is a prime example – moving to that earlier would have saved costs not only in the United States but worldwide. We’re a bit behind in Europe on that shift, but it’s happening. It’s more cost-efficient and better both for the patients and us, the physicians.
Another big thing is awareness regarding all diseases. Not just treating patients at the end stage but focusing on awareness earlier on so that treatment can start sooner and with a better outlook.
The next concept is communication between different specialties, not just sticking to what we know best. If you ask a surgeon whether to cut into someone or not, they’ll likely say yes because it’s what they’ve been trained to do. But when specialists across the board communicate on a single patient's case, they can come up with the best collaborative approach and treatment for the unique individual. Open communication and looking across borders—between vascular surgeons and interventionalists, for example—has accelerated vascular care so much.
Are there a few tips that you can share that have helped you enhance your ability to work in a multidisciplinary fashion?
Some people might disagree—a former boss told me that you always have to secure your ground, for example—but my approach is to be very open and collaborative. If we all open up our perspective a bit, I think we all gain a lot more in the end. We need to work together as vascular surgeons, radiologists, cardiologists, everyone. Yes, it means more work sometimes, but we won’t lose patients; we’ll earn more patients because we send them to each other. The result is better care for the patient.
I actively approach my colleagues in other specialties and say, “Let’s work together.” You might open yourself up to some vulnerability, but ultimately, everyone wins, especially the patient.
I don’t believe in fixed borders around specialties. Our responsibility is providing the best possible care to our patients, and the best way to do that is through collaboration.
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World's Brightest Physicians
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You speak on podium at many conferences and do a fair amount of physician training. What are some of the important skill sets needed to be an effective leader in these types of initiatives?
The most important thing is overcoming your own insecurity that you won’t give a good talk or presentation. You can prepare, research, and build a great presentation, but you still need that confidence to step up to the podium. When you’re facing the audience, remember that they want to hear what you have to say. They’re there because they’re interested in your work. That helps push through the nerves.
Another thing is, once again, having mentors encouraging you, who say, “This is your study, your data set. Get up and present it.” No one else can do that because it’s your data set. That’s the kind of support I try to give younger colleagues too. Some of my younger female colleagues, for example, presented at Charing Cross and ISET. It makes me so happy to see them present at conferences.
Ultimately, it’s about making sure the work you’ve done keeps going, even after you’re not in that role anymore. You want to make sure there are people who will carry on what you’ve started. That’s what matters.
Let’s get to some rapid-fire questions. First, do you listen to music while you're in the operating room? If so, do you have any favorite songs?
There’s an Austrian song, one of my favorites. Other than that, I like Taylor Swift’s latest song, it makes me happy.
How about movies – what are your top 3 favorites of all time?
Definitely ‘Pretty Woman’ with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. It’s not about the movie itself, but about the soundtracks.
If you could go back to your late 20s, what one thing would you tell your younger self?
I would say just one thing: be more confident. Trust that you can do whatever you want to do. If someone says you can’t, don’t listen to them. Try it. Live your dreams, both in your personal life and professional life. Just go for it.
Are there any upcoming conferences or clinical research or anything else that you'd like to raise awareness for or mention?
Yes—especially the CLI conferences like AMP US and AMP Europe. Paris Vascular Insights is a great one, especially for younger physicians. It has a very innovative, interactive format, which reduces the barriers of involvement and asking questions.
In terms of clinical research, there are so many exciting, innovative things happening in the endovascular field – bioresorbable catheters, new IVL technologies, drugs to use, drug combinations, transferring tools, and vessel prep devices. COVID slowed some of it down, but we're seeing major innovation return, which is fantastic.
You speak on podium at many conferences and do a fair amount of physician training. What are some of the important skill sets needed to be an effective leader in these types of initiatives?
The most important thing is overcoming your own insecurity that you won’t give a good talk or presentation. You can prepare, research, and build a great presentation, but you still need that confidence to step up to the podium. When you’re facing the audience, remember that they want to hear what you have to say. They’re there because they’re interested in your work. That helps push through the nerves.
Another thing is, once again, having mentors encouraging you, who say, “This is your study, your data set. Get up and present it.” No one else can do that because it’s your data set. That’s the kind of support I try to give younger colleagues too. Some of my younger female colleagues, for example, presented at Charing Cross and ISET. It makes me so happy to see them present at conferences.
Ultimately, it’s about making sure the work you’ve done keeps going, even after you’re not in that role anymore. You want to make sure there are people who will carry on what you’ve started. That’s what matters.
Let’s get to some rapid-fire questions. First, do you listen to music while you're in the operating room? If so, do you have any favorite songs?
There’s an Austrian song, one of my favorites. Other than that, I like Taylor Swift’s latest song, it makes me happy.
How about movies – what are your top 3 favorites of all time?
Definitely ‘Pretty Woman’ with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. It’s not about the movie itself, but about the soundtracks.
If you could go back to your late 20s, what one thing would you tell your younger self?
I would say just one thing: be more confident. Trust that you can do whatever you want to do. If someone says you can’t, don’t listen to them. Try it. Live your dreams, both in your personal life and professional life. Just go for it.
Are there any upcoming conferences or clinical research or anything else that you'd like to raise awareness for or mention?
Yes—especially the CLI conferences like AMP US and AMP Europe. Paris Vascular Insights is a great one, especially for younger physicians. It has a very innovative, interactive format, which reduces the barriers of involvement and asking questions.
In terms of clinical research, there are so many exciting, innovative things happening in the endovascular field – bioresorbable catheters, new IVL technologies, drugs to use, drug combinations, transferring tools, and vessel prep devices. COVID slowed some of it down, but we're seeing major innovation return, which is fantastic.
You speak on podium at many conferences and do a fair amount of physician training. What are some of the important skill sets needed to be an effective leader in these types of initiatives?
The most important thing is overcoming your own insecurity that you won’t give a good talk or presentation. You can prepare, research, and build a great presentation, but you still need that confidence to step up to the podium. When you’re facing the audience, remember that they want to hear what you have to say. They’re there because they’re interested in your work. That helps push through the nerves.
Another thing is, once again, having mentors encouraging you, who say, “This is your study, your data set. Get up and present it.” No one else can do that because it’s your data set. That’s the kind of support I try to give younger colleagues too. Some of my younger female colleagues, for example, presented at Charing Cross and ISET. It makes me so happy to see them present at conferences.
Ultimately, it’s about making sure the work you’ve done keeps going, even after you’re not in that role anymore. You want to make sure there are people who will carry on what you’ve started. That’s what matters.
Let’s get to some rapid-fire questions. First, do you listen to music while you're in the operating room? If so, do you have any favorite songs?
There’s an Austrian song, one of my favorites. Other than that, I like Taylor Swift’s latest song, it makes me happy.
How about movies – what are your top 3 favorites of all time?
Definitely ‘Pretty Woman’ with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. It’s not about the movie itself, but about the soundtracks.
If you could go back to your late 20s, what one thing would you tell your younger self?
I would say just one thing: be more confident. Trust that you can do whatever you want to do. If someone says you can’t, don’t listen to them. Try it. Live your dreams, both in your personal life and professional life. Just go for it.
Are there any upcoming conferences or clinical research or anything else that you'd like to raise awareness for or mention?
Yes—especially the CLI conferences like AMP US and AMP Europe. Paris Vascular Insights is a great one, especially for younger physicians. It has a very innovative, interactive format, which reduces the barriers of involvement and asking questions.
In terms of clinical research, there are so many exciting, innovative things happening in the endovascular field – bioresorbable catheters, new IVL technologies, drugs to use, drug combinations, transferring tools, and vessel prep devices. COVID slowed some of it down, but we're seeing major innovation return, which is fantastic.
