Posted December 3, 2013
By VALERIA VIERA
In Caracas, Venezuela, an incredibly high-achieving doctor with an impressive resume and inspiring story came to talk to students at a school to offer them advice, tell about his story and describe his steps to becoming what he is today.
He is the face of many Venezuelans who seek for high education and an example since his work is something that should not go unnoticed. There are so many people that deserve to have their work appreciated by those who actually benefit from it, and Roberto Cubeddu is such an individual.
Dr. Roberto Jose Cubeddu
Roberto Jose Cubeddu was born in Denver in 1973. He studied medicine and was graduated first in his class from Central University of Venezuela in 1998. He came to the U.S. and earned four masters degrees and ended up at Harvard University.
During his journey, his internship and residency hospital was at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, in which he remained until 2007.
He was the first to graduate with a new specialty called “structural heart disease” at Harvard University and moved to Miami to start his career as a doctor.
He has been working for three years already. One of his main hospitals is Mercy Hospital, where he specializes in the field of interventional cardiology. As a cardiologist, he has to Deal with conditions, abnormalities and diseases of the heart and of course the cardiovascular system.
Cubeddu is, of course, licensed to practice medicine in the state of Florida. After speaking to Dr Cubeddum he refers himself as a “Harvard graduate interventional cardiologist and one of the first to hold a sub specialty in the new field of structural heart disease.” Through a minimally invasive catheter approach, Cubeddu is able to replace heart valves, close a variety of congenital or acquired heart defects.
This procedure is what mainly makes Cubeddu appealing to others. The procedure consists of replacing heart valves, as he explains, that can be done without the need of open heart surgery. It is called “Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) or Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI),” and it has saved so many lives.
One of Cubeddu’s many patients, Carlos Schroeder, talked about his own experience, explaining that after his doctor informed him that there was a new technology that could replace his heart valve without open heart surgery, he immediately decided to go for it.
It was then when his doctor told him that the innovative procedure was performed at the JFK Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., by interventional cardiologist Robert Cubbedu, also director of the Structural and Adult Congenital Hear Intervention Program at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center. “I call him Dr. Messi,” Schroeder said, “To me, Dr. Cubeddu is the Lionel Messi of medicine,” he said.
His first human percutaneous valve implant was done in Europe in 2000, almost 14 years ago. He says that since then, more than 8,000 patients all over the world have benefited from this new technology and taken advantage from it.
“We should not forget that open-heart surgery in patients with aortic stenosis is currently still the elective procedure of choice that results in improved clinical symptoms and long-term survival. Unfortunately, in a high percentage of patients with aortic stenosis, open-heart surgery may be prohibitive and of high risk. It is in these patients that the alternative percutaneous valve replacement intervention becomes attractive,”Cubbedu explains.
Cubeddu, in collaboration with Aventura Hospital & Medical Center, Kendall Regional Medical Center, Mercy Hospital, Westside Regional Medical Center, Northwest Medical Center and JFK Medical Center, offers patients the most “comprehensive, precise, personalized and innovative cardiovascular care science has to offer,” said the Florida Heart and Vascular Care program.
Dr. Roberto Jose Cubeddu
Cubeddu likes playing soccer and loves beach sports such as kite surf. On weekends, his favorite thing to do is to go out on his own boat and enjoy the hot days of Miami. He is training to run a marathon and, in his limited free time, he focuses on the exercise.
Cubeddu is a very athletic guy who loves to cook. He has not married and has no children. He also enjoys meeting with friends to have drinks and talk.
He made it very clear that he has little time and works very hard. He loves what he is and what he does but he is aware of how time-consuming medicine can be.
Cubeddu won the ACP Outstanding Resident of the Year Award in recognition of academic excellence during Internal Medicine residency training in Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami, Fla. In that same Medical Center, he won the ACP Chief Resident Award and recognition by the American College of Physicians Society for leadership role as chief resident.
He has also won a Scientific Research Award in recognition of best clinical research project presented orally at the SOLACI meeting, Cancun, Mexico.
Cubeddu adds at the end that he is well-prepared to provide “minimally invasive diagnoses and treatments for heart and cardiovascular conditions, including enlarged heart muscles and vascular blockages.”