With great pleasure, we announce that Matthias Koschutnik has been selected as PhD Student of the Month August 2020. He is enrolled in the N094 programme „Vascular Biology“ and works in the research group of Julia Mascherbauer at the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine II.
Matthias and his colleagues focus on clinical projects in the field of interventional cardiology and cardiovascular imaging. More specifically, his main research objective aims at investigating new predictors of outcome following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) as well as edge-to-edge mitral and tricuspid valve repair. For that matter, multimodality imaging and particularly cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used to non-invasively study alterations of the myocardial structure caused by pathological conditions including valvular heart disease, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), and cardiac amyloidosis.
For his thesis project, Matthias investigates the prognostic relevance of the often “forgotten” right heart in patients undergoing TAVR. The aim of this study is to show the fundamental importance of comprehensive right ventricular assessment prior to valvular intervention, and to further demonstrate the advantages of MRI over echocardiography in the context of pre-procedural risk stratification. His work has already been awarded at various international meetings such as the „EuroPCR’s Got Talent“ competition, and more recently at this year’s ESC congress in the category „Advances in Science“. The submission of the corresponding manuscript is currently ongoing and the paper is expected to be published soon.