Summary

Guest Speakers

Ruggero De Paulis is the director of the Cardiac Surgery Department of the European Hospital in Rome, a position he has held since 2006.  After graduating from the University of L’Aquila and completing his residency at the University of Torino, he spent two years in an artificial heart programme at the University of Utah, and then two years as staff surgeon at the VI and XII University of Paris. Since then he has been working in Rome, at the University of Tor Vergata, where he was appointed Associate Professor in 2002.  His main interest is in aortic and mitral repair surgery and he is the designer of the “Valsalva” graft, currently used in most aortic root surgeries.

Marjan Jahangiri graduated in medicine from University College Hospital, London and then completed her general surgical training at University College London and affiliated hospitals. She trained at the London Chest, St Bartholomew’s and the Royal Brompton Hospitals in London. She was awarded a research fellowship at the William Harvey Laboratories at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and Medical School. She then subspecialised in adult and congenital cardiac surgery at the Royal Brompton, St. Bartholomew’s, London Chest and Great Ormond Street Hospitals and Children’s Hospital in Boston. She was appointed Consultant Cardiac Surgeon and Senior Lecturer in 2001 at St. George’s Hospital, University of London and then appointed Professor of Cardiac Surgery at University of London in 2007. She is the first female Professor of cardiac surgery in the United Kingdom and Europe. She has been in charge of a research programme where their group has produced 25 higher research degrees (PhD and masters). She has authored >200 peer reviewed publications and is the surgical lead for several national and international guidelines. Her specialist interest is surgery of the aortic valve and aorta. She is committed to Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) and is a member of its board. She has been instrumental in implementing various aspects of ERAS protocol through teaching and training in several centres in the UK and Europe. Professor Jahangiri was appointed in 2019 as Chair of the Specialty Advisory Committee of the Surgical Royal Colleges for Cardiothoracic Surgery. In this capacity, she is in charge of training of cardiothoracic surgeons in the UK and Ireland. She was the finalist for Silver Scalpel Award of the Royal College of Surgeons for excellence in training in 2018. She was awarded the BMJ Clinical Leadership Team Award 2018, for management of aortic valve and aortic disease.

Anders Jeppsson graduated from Linköping University in 1989 and completed his training in cardiothoracic surgery at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg in 1997. Following a research fellowship in cardiothoracic transplantation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota 1997, Dr Jeppsson started as staff surgeon at Sahlgrenska University Hospital and become senior consultant in 2003. Dr Jeppsson defended his PhD thesis in 1998 and become associate professor in cardiothoracic surgery at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg in 2002. Since 2008 Dr Jeppsson has a full professorship at this institution and is also adjunct professor at University of Iceland. Dr Jeppsson has been chairman for the SWEDEHEART registry, secretary general for Scandinavian Association for Thoracic Surgery and deputy chair for Swedish Heart Association. Dr Jeppsson was chair for European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery’s Clinical Guideline committee 2017-2020.

Dr. Mateo Marin-Cuartas is a cardiac surgeon in the University Department of Cardiac Surgery at the Leipzig Heart Center in Leipzig, Germany. He is board-certified in cardiac surgery and also trained in critical care medicine. Dr. Marin-Cuartas obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Leipzig, in Leipzig, Germany, for his research on mitral valve disease and coursed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department at Stanford University in Stanford, California, with a focus on heart valve biomechanics. Dr. Marin-Cuartas is the coordinator of academic affairs and the hybrid thoracoscopic atrial fibrillation ablation program at the cardiac surgery department in Leipzig. He holds leadership positions at the Latin American Association of Cardiac and Endovascular Surgery (LACES), serves as a member of the Mitral and Tricuspid Task Force at the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS), and holds editorial positions at EJCTS, JACC Case Reports, CTSnet, and LACES. His main research interest is valvular heart disease.

Dr Nikolaos Bonaros was born in Athens, Greece, graduated from the University of Ioannina and holds a PhD and a Master of Health Economics from the London School of Economics. In addition he accomplished a Second Level Master in Minimally invasive Cardiac Surgery from the University of Pisa. He completed his training at the University of Vienna and Innsbruck and performed stem cells therapy research at the Columbia University in New York. He is currently leading the endoscopic and transcatheter program for structural cardiac diseases in Innsbruck and is co-chairing the heart transplant program. His clinical research interests include coronary and mitral valve surgery, and his team focuses on biomarkers and implementation of novel technology for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Klautz attended medical school at Leiden University, where he also did his PhD research combined with a research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. He was trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Since 2002 he has worked as a CT surgeon at Leiden UMC, where he became professor and chair of the department in 2008. In 2019 he was also appointed chair of the department of CT surgery at Amsterdam UMC.