Ottavio Alfieri received an award from the American Association for Thoracic Surgery for his career achievements

The Mitral Conclave Lifetime Achievement Award is intended to celebrate the entire career of the cardiac surgeon who in 1996 launched at Ospedale San Raffaele a pathway to the cutting edge in cardiac surgery through a constant process of clinical research, technological innovation and high-level training that today finds its main expression in the Heart Valve Center, an advanced care pathway for heart valve disease.

This is a major lifetime achievement award given to the well-known Italian heart surgeon for his fundamental contributions in this field. Alfieri's name, in fact, is known worldwide for introducing the “Edge-to-Edge” technique for the surgical treatment of mitral and tricuspid insufficiency, a revolutionary insight that paved the way for percutaneous treatment of many valve diseases.

Ottavio Alfieri, born 1947, currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Cardiac Surgery Department of Ospedale San Raffaele. He is President of the Alfieri Heart Foundation, created to support education, research and innovation at Ospedale San Raffaele. 

Between 1996 and 2017, he was Chief of the Cardiac Surgery Department and Cardio-Thoracic-Vascular Department at Ospedale San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, and Full Professor of Cardiac Surgery at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.

In the early part of his career, he devoted himself to the treatment of congenital heart disease in children, first in Italy, in Bergamo, where he was a student of Lucio Parenzan, and later in the United States. His experience with adult cardiac surgery began in 1980 in the Netherlands where he spent 6 years. He returned to Italy in 1986, became Chief of the Cardiac Surgery Department at Spedali Civili di Brescia, and then in 1996 moved to Ospedale San Raffaele.