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Camelia is a Consultant Clinical Scientist in cardiology with 24 years’ experience in advanced echocardiography methodologies and specialist interest in valve heart disease, inherited cardiomyopathies and heart failure.

Camelia graduated from the University of Craiova Medical School, Romania and started her training in Echocardiography at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham. She achieved BSE adult accreditation and joined the advanced inherited cardiomyopathy team at St George’s hospital in the early years of her UK career. Camelia has extensive NHS clinical, technical, research, managerial and leadership work experience across multiple London NHS tertiary trusts including St George’s hospital, University College London, Royal Brompton and Harefield Trust, Kings College Hospital and Guys and St Thomas Trust. She is registered as a Higher Specialist Scientist in cardiac science, doctorate level equivalence, and was awarded the fellowship of the Academy of Healthcare Science.

Camelia has a specialist interest in the diagnosis, monitoring and management of patients with heart valve disease.  In her early career, she supported the intra-operative mitral valve surgical repair programme at St George’s hospital and delivered TOE training sessions to cardiac anesthetists. She contributed to the development of interventional cardiac services at The Heart Hospital supporting TAVI, PFO/ASD closures and MitraClip implant procedures. She was part of the team that implanted the 1st UK TAVI device in a patient with heterotopic heart transplant. Camelia led the implementation of physiologist-led valve clinic and valve stress echo service at Harefield hospital and, over the last year, has actively supported the valve clinics and interventional cardiology services at Guys and St Thomas hospital.

Camelia has extensive expertise in the diagnosis and management of inherited cardiomyopathies. She led the advanced echocardiography service of the internationally recognised cardiomyopathy clinic at University College London for over 12 years. She set up a highly specialised hypertrophic cardiomyopathy stress echocardiography service and participated actively in trials aimed at the assessment of Disopyramide treatment, safety and efficacy in reducing left ventricle outflow tract obstruction. In collaborative work with the cardiomyopathy team, she set up a physiologist-led service that trialed the role of right ventricle contrast and Tissue Doppler Imaging in the early detection of ARVC. Camelia has also developed advanced clinical and imaging knowledge in the assessment of complex heart transplants and cardiac assist devices during her 3 years work experience at Harefield hospital, a national leading heart transplant centre.

Camelia has extensive teaching experience, was a mentor and supervisor for many overseas Erasmus students, coordinated BSE and EACVI accreditation training programmes and has been an invited speaker on a series of MSc training programmes over the last 10 years. She also has a highly successful background in leadership and management and achieved a Higher Distinction, Level 5 VRQ Diploma in Leadership and Management as well as the Ignite leader coaching certificate.

Academically, Camelia supported numerous research studies that required advanced echo imaging modalities often providing input on novel protocols. She participated actively in data collection, analysis and interpretation, research governance and research publications.

Camelia is an active member of European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging, British Society of Echocardiography, British Heart Valve Society, Academy of Healthcare Science and the National School of Healthcare Science.

Publications

  • When right heart valves are open 24/7; Fulya Avci Demir MD, Konstantinos C. Theodoropoulos MD, MSc, Can Zhou MD, Camelia Demetrescu BSc, MD, Mark J. Monaghan PhD, FRCP(Hon), FACC, FESC; accepted for publication in the Archives of The Turkish Society of Cardiology, Sep 2018
  • Right Atrial and Ventricular Echocardiographic Strain Analysis Predicts Requirement for Right Ventricular Support after Left Ventricular Assist Device Implantation; accepted for publication by the European Heart Journal Cardiovascular Imaging (EHJCI-D-17-01508R1) on 26th March 2018
  • Ischaemia as a cause of LVOT gradient reversal in HCM, case review, Echo Research and Practice Vol. 4, issue 4, Sep 2017
  • Global Longitudinal Strain Predicts Cardiovascular Death in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, a Cohort Study, Heart BMJ, Feb 2016
  • The binary endocardial appearance is a poor discrimination of Anderson-Fabry disease from familial HCM, JACC, May 2008
  • Prevalence of Exercise induced LVOT obstruction in symptomatic patients with non-obstructive HCM, Heart, Nov 2007