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Dr Ronak Rajani is a consultant cardiologist heart valve disease and advanced cardiac imaging. He is also a Reader in Cardiovascular Imaging at King’s College London.
He has a specialist interest in monitoring and managing patients with heart valve disease and runs a specialist clinic for patients with mitral valve disease who are high-risk for surgical repair or replacement. Ronak also has experience in heart failure and inherited cardiac conditions.
He is currently the cardiology lead for cardiac computed tomography, research and development and digital web publishing at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital. Ronak also serves as the NIHR speciality group lead for cardiovascular services across south London and is the representative for the Royal College of Physicians and the British Cardiovascular Society for South East London. In 2019 he was appointed to the NHS England Clinical Advisory Group for Cardiac Services.
Ronak was the first and only recipient of the British Cardiovascular Society/American College of Cardiology Fellowship in Advanced Cardiac Imaging and received his training in cardiac MRI and nuclear cardiology at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London and training in cardiac CT and PET imaging at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.
He holds SCCT and EAVCI accredited training in cardiac CT (Level III), nuclear cardiology (Level II), cardiac MRI (Level II) and is trained in all aspects of advanced echocardiography (stress echo and transoesophageal echo).
He completed his echocardiography-based MD thesis in 2006 in valvular heart disease and has since published over 160 manuscripts in the field of cardiac imaging and valve disease. He maintains an active interest in research, and is particularly interested in clinical trials and the modern applications of cardiac CT in predicting cardiac risk and for cardiac structural and electrophysiology interventions. Ronak is currently the Principal investigator at St Thomas’ Hospital for the EVOLVED AS Trial, EVAREST, RAPID CTA Trial and AMGEN, APOLLO and MATTERHORN Trials and serves as a co-investigator on a number of other trials (e.g. PREVAKI and SELECT). He is a recognised key opinion leader for cardiac CT in the UK and lectures regularly nationally and internationally on cardiac CT and structural heart valve disease planning.
Ronak is on Communications Committee for the British Heart Valve Society and the British Society of Echocardiography and sits on the International Sub-committee and Abstract Grading Committee of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He has written a number of book chapters including the Oxford Handbook of Cardiac CT and the ESC Textbook of Cardiovascular Imaging.
He is one of only a few individuals in the UK to be designated a Fellow of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (FSCCT) and is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) and a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology.
Ronak is particularly interested in teaching and founded the SCCT Endorsed London International CT Academy and is the course director. This has since become one of the largest training academies of its kind in Europe. In 2017 he created the world’s first online training course for cardiac CT with a professional medical education company based in Austria.
In addition to lecturing nationally and internationally on aspects of cardiac imaging, he has devised a model for clinical attachments in the UK and accepts elective medical students and postgraduate students from all over the world.
Dr Rajani’s main interests are optimising outcomes using imaging for structural heart interventions, the prevalence and disease burden of heart valve conditions, valve clinic structures and advanced imaging in the evaluation of heart valve disease (fusion, computational modeling and simulation). Ronak’s current research students include:
- Winifred Owosu
- Dr Omar Chehab
- Dr Harminder Gill
- Dr Waqar Aziz
Dr. Ronak Rajani