Cardiovascular and respiratory

This research group gathers cardiologists, thoracic surgeons and pulmonologists to explore pathophysiological mechanisms of heart and lung diseases and how these can be applied to develop better diagnostic tests, prognostic markers and therapies. Also, the research is very involved in multicentric randomized clinical trials with new drugs.

These researchers have been exploring new biomarkers of inflammation in COPD and asthma and how these are related to environmental exposures. And also, the pathophysiological mechanisms of coronary artery disease development and plaque vulnerability.

This team is particularly interested in the identification of vulnerable patients through cardiac computed tomography. They are exploring the contribution of chronic hyper-activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the impact of an interventional procedure – renal denervation – in both blood pressure control and in surrogate markers of target organ damage.

In terms of methodology, research in Cardiology is predominantly clinical, retrospective or prospective, using databases developed with data gathered from clinical records and complementary diagnostic tools, in particular demographic data, patient baseline data, specific clinical data for the ongoing study and also follow-up data whenever appropriate. The most commonly used tools for analysis are SPSS or SAS programs. This group performs quantitative, descriptive, population comparison analysis and univariate and multivariate regression analyses (linear, logistic, Cox) to identify outcome predictors or simply for adjustment purposes.