Clinical expertise

Dr Gherardo Finocchiaro deals with many aspects of cardiology, including:

He has specialist interest and expertise in:

  • heart muscle diseases which often have a genetic basis such as arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
  • athlete’s heart and differential diagnosis with cardiac conditions
  • cardiac screening in athletes (sports cardiology)
  • evaluation of families where there has been a sudden cardiac death that might represent a genetic condition
  • investigation of family members of patients with a suspected inherited cardiac condition
  • echocardiography and cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging


Biography

Dr Gherardo Finocchiaro is a consultant cardiologist at Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals and an honorary senior lecturer at St George’s University of London.

Dr Finocchiaro completed his undergraduate and postgraduate training at University of Trieste (Italy). He then spent one year at Stanford University (CA, US), focusing his research on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and athlete’s heart, gaining a post-doctoral diploma. He subsequently specialised cardiovascular magnetic resonance at The Heart Hospital imaging centre and at St George’s Hospital in London. Gherardo has level 3 accreditation in CMR (EACVI) and is accredited in echocardiography by the British Society of Echocardiography.

He completed a PhD at St George’s University of London focusing on sudden death in athletes, family screening in decedents of sudden death and physiological adaptation to exercise. Dr Finocchiaro won several awards and grants for his research and he was a finalist for the European Society of Cardiology Young Investigator Award in 2015. Dr Finocchiaro published several papers in highly ranked international journals.

Dr Finocchiaro worked for two years as a consultant cardiologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London.


Research Interests

Dr Finocchiaro has research interests in physiological cardiac adaptation to exercise, cardiomyopathies and causes of sudden death in the young.

He investigated the causes of sudden cardiac death in athletes and the role of family screening in this context during his PhD at St George’s University of London.

Publications

Dr Finocchiaro’s publications are focused on sudden death in young individuals, cardiomyopathies and ‘athlete’s heart’. He published in major international journals such as NEJM, JACC, and European Heart Journal. He has presented in several sessions at the European Society of Cardiology conference.

You can view all of Dr Finocchiaro’s publications on PubMed.

Teaching

Dr Finocchiaro has over 10 years of experience in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and is an honorary clinical lecturer at St George’s University of London. He is the deputy course director of the MsC in Sports Cardiology at SGUL.