Reference physician in atherosclerosis and rare diseases

The best way to understand the legacy of Professor Pedro Valdivelso is the definition he gave of his profession on the academic website La Noche de los Investigadores: “The practice of medicine is in itself a science, but it must be accompanied by research; this not only contributes to the advancement of knowledge, but also improves clinical practice itself, and therefore patient care, which is the ultimate goal of my profession.”

With this in mind, Valdivelso, an internist by training, has published his prolific activity in specialties as diverse as atherosclerosis, vascular prevention, metabolism and neurological diseases. Always according to La Noche de los Investigadores, two of his main and most recent findings, together with other researchers, were “the publication of an independent clinical trial in patients with pseudoxanthoma elasticum, in which they showed a potential benefit aimed at delaying at least the progression of the disease” and also “the publication of cut-off levels of LPL activity [lopoproteína lipasa, una enzima que participa en el proceso metabólico] “Which diagnoses familial chylomicronemia syndrome when genetic testing is inconclusive.”

Another of his lines of research, always with practical results, according to the same site, is the use of PET/CT and RN-3T in the evaluation of atherosclerosis. PET-CT is a non-invasive diagnostic method to detect the metabolic evolution of the patient’s body. 3T, for its part, is an advanced magnetic resonance technique. Valdivelso was an expert in atherosclerotic diseases, having chaired the Spanish Society of Atherosclerosis between 2018 and 2021.

By that time, he had already reached the rank of professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Malaga and worked as scientific deputy to the director of the Andalusian city’s Institute for Biomedical Research; in this entity he also chaired the training committee. Without forgetting, of course, his care of patients in the Department of Internal Medicine of the Virgen de la Victoria University Hospital, always present in Malaga.