“Whilst training in paediatric cardiology, I learnt not to settle for the status quo and to seek out new solutions”

Being born into a family with strong ties to medicine, and particularly to cardiology, shaped Dr Georgia Sarquella-Brugada’s interests from a very early age. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think about pursuing a career in medicine and cardiology; I never considered anything else. But I did decide to specialise in paediatrics,” explains the head of the Cardiology Department at SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital.

After completing her residency, she moved to Canada to train in paediatric cardiology. There she gained a comprehensive understanding of congenital heart defects, as this is a discipline that follows the patient from the foetal stage through to adulthood. She then specialised in haemodynamics and cardiac catheterisation and completed her training at Necker Hospital in Paris.

Her time at Saint Justin Hospital in Montreal coincided with the development of new technologies that revolutionised minimally invasive cardiac treatment. “I was very fortunate to experience the rise of devices that allowed heart defects to be closed using a catheter, without the need to open the chest,” she recalls. Thus, seeing how other experts were challenging the limits of the time, she began to wonder whether the established norms could be changed.

When he returned to Barcelona in 2011, he also trained in electrophysiology, arrhythmias and ablations. Currently, in the Cardiology Department at SJD Hospital, he works on the comprehensive management of congenital heart defects, arrhythmias and hereditary genetic heart diseases, a field undergoing transformation thanks to genetics and gene therapies.

Medicine and humanism at SJD

The team led by Dr Sarquella-Brugada, comprising approximately 40 professionals, is multidisciplinary and shares a common goal: to provide the best possible care to every patient, both national and international, and their families. “We are a very diverse group, comprising doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, psychologists, specialists and bioengineers, and that defines the way we work and evolve,” she explains.

Work in the Unit is shaped by advances in genetics, minimally invasive surgery, catheterisation and telemedicine, which have transformed the way complex cardiac conditions are managed with increasingly precise and personalised treatments. Caring for patients with rare diseases and supporting families from all over the world have had a profound impact on Dr Sarquella’s career: “There are some patients who hold a very special place in my heart.”

Sarquella, who is also president of the Spanish Society of Paediatric Cardiology, asserts that medicine cannot be understood solely from a technical perspective. “I cannot conceive of medicine in its purest, most rigid form. What makes us special is precisely our humanism and our closeness to the patient,” she says. This philosophy, the motto of SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital, enables us to support families from all over the world through a much more personalised approach.