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Consultant Cardiologist, Honorary Senior Lecturer

Dr Gherardo Finocchiaro is a consultant cardiologist at St George’s Hospital 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 center 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.

Clinical interests

Dr Gherardo Finocchiaro deals with many aspects of general cardiology, including hypertension, heart failure, possible coronary artery disease and valvular heart disease.
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
  • 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.

Qualifications:

MD, PhD, FESC

Research Interests

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

Publications

Top 10 publications:

  1. Finocchiaro G, Papadakis M, Robertus JL, Dhutia H, Steriotis AK, Tome M, Mellor G, Merghani A, Malhotra A, Behr E, Sharma S, Sheppard MN. Etiology of Sudden Death in Sports: Insights From a United Kingdom Regional Registry. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2016 67(18):2108-15.
  2.  Finocchiaro G, Dhutia H, D’Silva A, Malhotra A, Steriotis A, Millar L, Prakash K, Narain R, Papadakis M, Sharma R, Sharma S. Effect of Gender and Sporting Discipline on Left Ventricular Adaptation to Exercise. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging. 2016; 10(9):965-972.
  3. Malhotra A, Dhutia H, Finocchiaro G, Gati S, Beasley I, Clift P, Cowie C, Kenny A, Mayet J, Oxborough D, Patel K, Pieles G, Rakhit D, Ramsdale D, Shapiro L, Somauroo J, Stuart G, Varnava A, Walsh J, Yousef Z, Tome M, Papadakis M, Sharma S. Outcomes of Cardiac Screening in Adolescent Soccer Players. N Engl J Med. 2018;379(6):524-534.
  4. Finocchiaro G, Papadakis M, Dhutia H, Zaidi A, Malhotra A, Fabi E, Cappelletto C, Brook J, Papatheodorou E, Ensam B, Miles CJ, Bastiaenen R, Attard V, Homfray T, Sharma R, Tome M, Carr-White G, Merlo M, Behr ER, Sinagra G, Sharma S. Electrocardiographic differentiation between ‘benign T-wave inversion’ and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Europace. 2018;doi: 10.1093/europace/euy179.
  5. Finocchiaro G, Papadakis M, Tanzarella G, Dhutia H, Miles C, Tome M, Behr ER, Sharma S, Sheppard MN. Sudden Death Can Be the First Manifestation of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: Data From a United Kingdom Pathology Registry. JACC Clin Electrophysiol. 2019;5(2):252-254.
  6. Finocchiaro G, Behr ER, Tanzarella G, Papadakis M, Malhotra A, Dhutia H, Miles C, Diemberger I, Sharma S, Sheppard MN. Anomalous Coronary Artery Origin and Sudden Cardiac Death: Clinical and Pathological Insights From a National Pathology Registry. JACC Clin Electrophysiol. 2019;5(4):516-522.
  7. Finocchiaro G, Dhutia H, Gray B, Ensam B, Papatheodorou S, Miles C, Malhotra A, Fanton Z, Bulleros P, Homfray T, Witney AA, Bunce N, Anderson LJ, Ware JS, Sharma R, Tome M, Behr ER, Sheppard MN, Papadakis M, Sharma S. Diagnostic yield of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in first-degree relatives of decedents with idiopathic left ventricular hypertrophy. Europace. 2020;22(4):632-642
  8. Finocchiaro G, Westaby J, Bhatia R, Malhotra A, Behr ER, Papadakis M, Sharma S, Sheppard MN. Sudden Death in Female Athletes: Insights From a Large Regional Registry in the United Kingdom. Circulation 2021 30;144(22):1827-1829.
  9. Finocchiaro G, Westaby J, Behr ER, Papadakis M, Sharma S, Sheppard MN. Association of Sexual Intercourse With Sudden Cardiac Death in Young Individuals in the United Kingdom. JAMA Cardiology 2022 1;7(3):358-359.
  10. Finocchiaro G, Radaelli D, D’Errico S, Papadakis M, Behr ER, Sharma S, Westaby J, Sheppard MN. Sudden Cardiac Death Among Adolescents in the United Kingdom. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2023 Mar 21;81(11):1007-1017.

You can view all of Dr Finocchiaro’s publications on PubMed here.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=FINOCCHIARO+GHERARDO

Teaching

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