Vivian M Abascal, MD

Vivian M. Abascal, M.D., has been appointed Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine (Cardiology). Formerly Assistant Professor of Medicine, Clinical Series Track, at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, Dr. Abascal was also Co-director of the Cardiovascular Women's Health Clinic in the Gill Heart Institute at the University of Kentucky, and Co-director of the Heart Station and Echocardiography Laboratory at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Kentucky. She received her medical degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, and completed several clinical and research fellowships in medicine, cardiology, and cardiovascular epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and Boston University Medical School. She specializes in topics related to women and heart disease and to echocardiography.

Dr. Abascal and her colleagues at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School were the first to develop an echocardiographic score to predict a successful outcome of percutaneous balloon valvuloplasty, therefore facilitating patient selection. The results of these projects were presented in national and international meetings and were published in major cardiology journals such as Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.