Mario Gaudino

Mario F.L. Gaudino, MD, PhD, MSCE, FEBCTS, FACC, FAHA is an Italian cardiothoracic surgeon who is the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Professor in Cardiothoracic Surgery (II) and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at Weill Cornell Medicine and an attending cardiac surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is an expert in coronary revascularization and clinical trialist. He is known for conducting the PALACS trial, which demonstrated that posterior pericardiotomy at the time of cardiac surgery reduced the incidence of post-operative atrial fibrillation and pericardial effusion.

Education
Gaudino completed medical school in 1994 graduating cum laude at the Catholic University of Rome and completed his residency in cardiac surgery at the same institution in 1999. During his residency, he completed a research fellowship at the European Homograft Bank in Brussels. Following residency, he completed a clinical fellowship in cardiac surgery at Hospital San Camillo de Lellis in Rieti and joined the faculty at the Catholic University of Rome in 2000 as an assistant professor and staff cardiac surgeon. In 2014, he joined Weill Cornell Medical Center as a aortic surgery fellow for 2 years and joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical Center in 2016. In 2017, he was promoted to the role of Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Professor in Cardiothoracic Surgery (II). In 2020, he completed both a MS in clinical epidemiology at Weill Cornell Medical College and his PhD at Maastricht University on the topic of the radial artery in CABG. In 2021, he was appointed a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

Research
Gaudino's research focuses on coronary arterial bypass grafting, aortic and mitral surgery and novel adjunctive procedures in cardiac surgery. He has published over 600 peer-reviewed publications covering clinical research. He is also the Assistant Dean for Clinical Trials, Director for the Joint Clinical Trials Office (JCTO), and the Director of Translational and Clinical Research for the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. He has published as first and last author in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Clinical Trialist
Gaudino is the principal investigator for the upcoming multinational ROMA and ROMA-Women trials investigating radial artery grafting in coronary artery bypass grafting. He is also a principal investigator for the upcoming STICH3C trial, comparing coronary artery bypass grafting and percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with low ejection fraction, the ODIN trial, comparing short-term dual antiplatelet therapy to standard of care after coronary artery bypass grafting, and the EPIC trial, a multicenter trial evaluating posterior left pericardiotomy to prevent post-operative atrial fibrillation and pericardial effusion after cardiac surgery.

Academic Activities
He was part of the guideline writing committee for the 2021 ACC/AHA Myocardial Revascularization Guidelines. He is also the Chair of the Coronary Artery Surgery Task Force of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery. He is the author of Technical Aspects of Modern Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery, a textbook published in 2020 along with several book chapters published in various texts. Gaudino has been funded by the NIH, the CIHR, the British Heart Foundation, and the Austrian Science Fund continuously since 2018. He is a deputy editor of Journal of Cardiac Surgery, a senior editor of Annals of Thoracic Surgery and a feature editor of Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. He also serves on the editorial board of Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Awards and Honors
Gaudino has been elected as a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the European Board of Cardiothoracic Surgery. He has been awarded the JACC Simon Dack Award for Outstanding Scholarship in 2020 and 2021, as well as the JTCVS Top Performance Award of the Editorial Board in 2022.