Axel Unbehaun

Axel Unbehaun is a senior consultant in cardiac surgery at the Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité (DHZC), Germany. He assumes the responsibility as the institutional surgical co-director of the Transcatheter Heart Valve Unit (TVU).

Since 2008, he has been continuously involved in establishing and advancing the local Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation program with more than 5,500 TAVI procedures to date. Beside his interest in contemporary cardiac surgery, he has extensive experience in comprehensive imaging-based strategy planning for transcatheter and hybrid procedures. Axel Unbehaun performs all types of transcatheter heart valve interventions with all access types as first operator. His scientific interest is focused on device landing zone complications, methodological limitations, predictors of long-term outcome, and application of transcatheter procedures under critical circumstances.

As a medical student, Axel Unbehaun obtained the Young Investigator Award at the International Congress on Electrocardiology. He received the Doctor of Medicine degree from Charité Berlin in 2000 with a thesis in physiology on linear and nonlinear dynamics in cardiac control. Afterwards, he underwent an intensive training program in cardiac surgery at the German Heart Center Berlin. In 2016, he received the degree “Privatdozent” from Charité Berlin in cardiac surgery with a habilitation thesis entitled “Transcatheter aortic valve implantation: Strategies for excellent initial and long-term results”. He is the author or co-author of more than 115 publications, most of them focused on transcatheter heart valve therapies.