Christoph Nienaber MD, PhD
Cardiology and Aortic Centre, Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals; Faculty of Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, United KingdomProfessor Christoph Nienaber is a lead consultant at the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust in London, the largest cardiovascular and respiratory referral centre in the UK; he is a Cardiologist and Interventional Specialist treating (private and NHS) patients with coronary, valvular, aortic and other vascular conditions and looks after inpatients who require admission to hospital and outpatients in his clinics.
He started his academic career at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, then undertook a temporary post at the University of California School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and cardiac Imaging, before returning to the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, to specialise in Interventional Cardiology and occupy a position as junior consultant.
In 2000 he accepted an offer to become Chairman of the Department of Internal medicine and Cardiology at the Rostock University Medical Center in Rostock, Germany.
In 2015, he was recruited to the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and works and teaches as a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK, leading the Aortopathy Service as an integral part of the ICC (inherited cardiac conditions) service.
He is a member of the British Society of Interventional Cardiology, a long-time fellow of the European and German Societies of Cardiology and is an internationally renowned specialist in his field.
In view of his clinical expertise Professor Christoph Nienaber sees and manages patients in the Aortopathy service including inherited and acquired aorto-vascular conditions as well as in general cardiology. He performs procedures in coronary and aortic conditions at any age beyond 16 years; his interventional activities are focused on percutaneous treatment of acute and chronic coronary artery disease (PCI, complex stenting, intracoronary imaging) and on the diagnosis and interventional (keyhole) treatment of chronic and acute aortic diseases such as dissection and aneurysms of the aorta and peripheral vessels using stents and stent-grafts. He also has expertise in non-surgical treatment of adult coarctation using dedicated stents, and aortic valve stenosis by use of TAVI-valves.
As a member of the ICC (inherited cardiovascular conditions) care group at the Royal Brompton Hospital he is focussing on hereditary connective tissue diseases such as Marfan Syndrome, Loeys-Dietz Syndrome and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in close cooperation with geneticists and cardiac surgeons. He had established the first comprehensive Marfan-Clinic at the University Medical Centre, Hamburg-Eppendorf, in 1992, and is the cofounder of the International Registry of acute Aortic Dissection (IRAD) in 1996.
The focus of his academic efforts and clinical research over the years was primarily centred on the integration of (non-invasive) Imaging and (non-surgical) Interventions; it started with functional imaging of myocardial metabolism by use of glucose uptake and the effects of revascularization, transitioned to coronary imaging and interventions and moved eventually to vascular imaging and non-surgical interventions to the aorta in the setting of dissection and aneurysm. Guideline-changing international trials have emerged from this interest such as INSTEAD and INSTEAD-XL in addition to observational evidence from IRAD published in high profile journals.
He currently serves on the Editorial Board of several high impact journals in the cardiovascular space and has been a reviewer for journals including NEJM, Lancet, Circulation, JACC, European Heart Journal and others; in his career he has published >668 peer reviewed papers and several book chapters, and enjoys stimulating multidisciplinary research and teaching juniors.