Dr. Dardi, would you please introduce yourself?

My name is Fabio Dardi, I’m a cardiologist at the Sant’Orsola University Hospital of Bologna. Currently I’m completing the last year of my PhD program and I am a tutor of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Master Program of the Alma Mater Studiorum University. 

When did you have your first clinical experience with Pulmonary Hypertension? What was the main issue you encountered regarding this disease at that time?

I started working with Professor Galiè’s group more than 10 years ago, when I completed my theses in medicine and cardiovascular medicine. At the time, the main issue was to organize the huge amount of data that had been collected in the pulmonary vascular disease referral centre of Bologna. I started developing  scientific, informatics and statistical competence in order to organize and begin to analyze this huge amount of data.

Looking at the future, what do you believe to be the biggest challenge regarding PH in the years to follow?

Over the past fifteen or so years we have identified and targeted only three pathways with approved drugs,  so, I think one of the most important challenges will be to discover additional pathogenic pathways that may be addressed by novel drugs, and perhaps to have a fuller understanding of the optimal timing for combination therapy and the best combination strategy for different stages of the disease. It is also important to develop novel approaches for the most common forms of PH, for example group 2 and group 3 PH.