DE PONTI ROBERTO

Roberto De Ponti was born in 1960 and in 1985 he graduated at the School of Medicine of the University of Pavia, Italy. In 1990, he obtained his diploma in Cardiology, at the same University. In the 80’s, after an initial experience in coronary care unit, he focussed on clinical arrhythmology, being involved in non-invasive and invasive evaluation of patients affected by cardiac arrhythmias, in the Arrhythmia Department of the Policlinico S.Matteo-University of Pavia, Italy, with prof. Jorge A. Salerno-Uriarte as mentor. In the same period, he developed a strict cooperation with the Cardiac Surgery Department (prof. M. Viganò) of the same university for pre-operative and intra-operative electrophysiologic evaluation and mapping to support antiarrhythmic heart surgery. Since 1986, he was actively involved in the catheter ablation program in his institution. Specifically, he contributed to the development of techniques for catheter ablation of supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias and, peculiarly, he developed a simplified method to safely perform transseptal catheterization for catheter ablation in the left heart. Moreover, his research focussed on different forms of ventricular arrhythmias and on particular aspects of atrial fibrillation, finalized to its ablation. Over the last years, he devoted himself to the use of non conventional mapping system for electrophysiology to perform pathophysiologic studies and to treat complex arrhythmias. The study of new energy sources for catheter ablation was also his main field of interest. He is the author and co-author of several publications in Italian and international peer-reviewed journals on clinical arrhythmology and non-pharmachologic treatment of cardiac arrhythmias.