Prof. Dr. med. Sabine Bleiziffer is a Senior Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at the Clinic for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the Herz- und Diabeteszentrum NRW in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. She is head of the Structural Heart Program. Her credo is to achieve the most benefitial approach for the patient in a interdisciplinary setting. After studying at the Leipzig Medical School 1994-2000, Sabine Bleiziffer graduated from the Ludwig-Maximilian Universität in Munich in 2001. She then started her residency training at the German Heart Center in Munich, where she recognized soon that heart surgery is a rapidly evolving specialty. Early interest in minimally invasive surgery motivated her to establish endoscopic graft harvesting at the German Heart Center Munich. The first human transcatheter aortic valve implantation in 2002 by Alain Cribier in Rouen was a milestone for heart medicine and an inspiring event for the future of cardiac surgery. After receiving board certification for cardiac surgery in 2007, Sabine Bleiziffer involved her clinical and scientific ambition into the newly founded transcatheter heart valve program at the German Heart Center Munich. She took over the lead of the Structural Heart Program in 2009. During the next exciting years, the team at the German Heart Center Munich was part of the development of transcatheter heart valve therapies with involvement in CE mark studies, first-in-man procedures, early adoption of new technologies and establishment of worldwide networking activities. Parallel to the maturation of the technologies, the role of cross-trained cardiac surgeons evolved in this field. As a senior cardiac surgeon, Sabine Bleiziffer developed a broad spectrum of conventional cardiac surgery with a focus on minimally-invasive therapies during the same time. In 2019, Sabine Bleiziffer moved to Bad Oeynhausen to work in one of the largest cardiac surgery units in Germany. As a senior cardiac surgeon, she performs surgery on complex and combined pathologies including cardiac transplantation, with a continued and special interest in minimally invasive procedures. Her key responsibility is the Structural Heart Program. The interdisciplinary center organization at the Herz- and Diabeteszentrum is most beneficial for the individual patient in terms of diagnosis, risk evaluation, choice of patient-tailored intervention and postprocedural treatment. Being convinced of the relevance of the surgical part of the heart team, Sabine Bleiziffer acts as member of numerous international associations, working groups and advisory boards, and as surgical steering and screening committee member of several multicenter studies.
