Affiliation:

Università degli Studi di Torino

ACTIVITIES AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES

From August 2003 to April 2005 he attended as a student in the heart surgery department of the S. Giovanni Battista “Molinette” Hospital in Turin, directed by Prof. A.M. Calafiore

From 2005 to 2007 he attended the Cardiac Surgery Department of the S. Giovanni Battista “Molinette” Hospital directed by Prof. Rinaldi as a trainee.

From September 2007 to August 2009 he held the position of “Research Instructor in Cardiothoracic Surgery” at the University of Pittsburgh (UPMC) under the supervision of Dr. Giovanni Speziali and Dr. Kenton J Zher, working full time on a program of minimally invasive cardiac surgery research. In particular, he contributed to the development of a transapical, beating heart, mitral valve repair technique using the Neochord system.

During the research program he also had the opportunity to perform clinical research with Dr. Yoshiya Toyoda (director of the heart and lung transplant program) with Dr. Christian Bermudez and Thomas Gleason.

From September 2007 to July 2008 he trained in robotic surgery using the Intuitive Surgical Da Vinci System under the supervision of Dr. Chandra Mullangi at the Mc Gowan Research Institute for Regenerative Surgery in Pittsburgh.

From September 2009 to July 2010 he attended, as a trainee, the heart surgery department of the S. Giovanni Battista “Molinette” hospital directed by Prof Rinaldi.

Since 13 April 2015 he has been medical executive at the “Città della Salute e della Scienza” of Turin.

Since November 2017 he has the license to teach, supervise and perform (activity of “proctor”) the Neochord procedure at any European or extra-European hospital that asks for advice.

From 23 December 2019 he is a researcher (type B) at the University of Turin.

On 23/12/2022 became Associate Professor Sector 06/E1 – CARDIO-THORACO-VASCULAR SURGERY at the University of Turin

On February 2023 he performed  the “First-in-human” of  Transcatheter mitral valve implantation with the Epygon System, and now he is a proctor for this technique.

He is or was an Investigator in the following Trails:

• SOURCE REGISTRY – Edwards SAPIEN Aortic Bioprosthesis European Outcome Registry. Multi-center, Observational Multi-National Registry
• OPERA (The Omega-3 fatty acids for Prevention of Post-Operative Atrial Fibrillation, multicentric international randomized trial
• OBSERVANT (OBservational Study of Effectiveness of AVR-TAVI procedures for severe Aortic steNosis Treatment). Observational study to evaluate the appropriateness, efficiency and efficacy of AVR-TAVI procedures in the treatment of Severe Aortic Stenosis. Study sponsored by the National Institute of Health.
• SOURCE REGISTRY XT 2010-10 (Edwards SAPIEN Aortic Bioprosthesis Multi-Region Outcome Registry)
• CCQ “Costs, Cognitive abilities and Quality of life of transcatheter aortic valve implantation and surgical aortic valve replacement”, spin-off study of the OBSERVANT registry. Sponsored by the National Institute of Health.
• Research project admitted to local funding (formerly 60% – year 2012) called “Validation of a reliable measurement system of the aortic annulus for the calibration of aortic valve prostheses”.
• Creator and promoter, in 2012, of the independent, non-sponsored Registry, “Italian Transcatheter Balloon-Expandable Valve Implantation Registry (ITER)” from which numerous other collaborations and scientific publications and oral presentations at congresses have sprung
• or Valve-in-Valve International Database (VIVID) Registry “
• IMPULSE Study To Improve Outcomes in Aortic Stenosis (Quality of Care in Aortic Stenosis)
• OBSERVANT II – Observational study for the evaluation of the efficacy of transcatheter procedures with new generation devices in the treatment of Severe Symptomatic Aortic Stenosis Study sponsored by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità
• Multicenter European Aortic Valve Registry (e-AVR). Trial registration number NCT03143361
• VALUTAVI (OBSERVANT II spin-off)
• First-In-Human Clinical Study for Treatment of Severe Mitral valve INsufficiency with Epygon™ tRanscatheter mitral VAlve system (MINERVA)

He was also Scientific Member, for the two-year period 2016-2017, for the Italian Society of Cardiac Surgery in the research group called GIROC (Italian Group of Research for Outcome in Cardiac Surgery). In the two-year period 2017-2018 he was appointed by the Italian Society of Cardiac Surgery as MEMBER of the RELATIONS WITH ITALIAN SOCIETIES AND SCIENTIFIC ENTITIES COMMITTEE

CLINICAL ACTIVITY

He performed the following interventions at the “City of Health and Science” (1st operator or 1st aid):

– 20 orthotopic heart transplants
– 5 lung transplants
– more than 600 TAVI procedures
– more than 500 cardiac surgery interventions as 1st operator
– >100 transventricular beating heart mitral valve repair using ePTFE cord implantation (Neochord)
– 16 TAVI Valve-in-Valve procedures and two TAVI procedures for aortic regurgitation.
– four transapical mitral perivalvular leak closure operations under the supervision of Dr. Matteo Montorfano (2 cases) and Dott. Fausto Castriota (2 cases)
– 8 Transcatheter mitral valve implantation with the Tendyne System
– one case of combined Tendyne and TAVI (first in Italy)
– One (First-in-human) Transcatheter mitral valve implantation with the Epygon System

From 24-11-2017 to date he has performed proctorage activities (more than 100 cases) of trasventricular beating heart mitral valve repair (Neochord) at European, Chinese, Canadian, Japanese and Hong Kong structures