Guilherme Attizzani, MD

About

Guilherme Attizzani, MD, is a nationally and internationally recognized interventional cardiologist and heart valve specialist, serving as Co-Director of the Valve and Structural Heart Disease Center, and the Alexander and Marianna McAfee Chair in Innovative Cardiac Interventions with University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute. He is also a Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Attizzani completed cardiology training at Dante Pazzanese Institute, University in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which is the largest cardiology hospital in Latin America. He also completed two years of interventional cardiology training there and then moved to the United States for a three-year research fellowship in intravascular imaging.

Dr. Attizzani has become one of the world’s leading experts in intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT). His research has helped improve stent implantation techniques, enabled a better understanding of vascular healing after drug-eluting stent implantation, and revealed important features of unstable coronary plaques. Dr. Attizzani published several scientific papers on OCT and was the editor of a book dedicated to this modality. He has also trained hundreds of physicians worldwide on OCT.

With the development of structural heart disease interventions, in particular the implantation of transcatheter heart valves, Dr. Attizzani sought specialized training in this growing field. He went to Italy to train for two years in a clinical fellowship devoted exclusively to valve and structural heart intervention at Ferrarotto Hospital, University of Catania, one of Europe’s largest volume centers for transcatheter valves.

Dr. Attizzani has become a world leader in optimal practices and minimally invasive approaches using local anesthesia only, for transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR. His extensive experience includes implantation and oversight of more than 3,000 transcatheter heart valves. He travels all over the world teaching physicians how to optimally implant these devices. In addition, his expertise has helped launch the use of transcatheter heart valve interventions in Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan and Taiwan, where he continues to proctor physicians.

Dr. Attizzani has received multiple clinical and academic honors. He is an avid researcher, authoring over 135 peer reviewed articles and leading 15 clinical trials. His areas of expertise include aortic valve stenosis, mitral valve regurgitation, transcatheter aortic valve replacement, and transcatheter mitral valve repair and replacement.

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