Article Category: Editorial
Published Online: Dec 07, 2022
Page range: 131 - 131
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rjc-2022-0032
© 2022 Published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Professor Carmen Ginghină, an exceptional personality of Romanian cardiology and medicine, passed away on Tuesday, August 2, 2022, in Bucharest.
Prof. Ginghină was a widely recognized and widely respected clinical cardiologist, teacher, researcher, and editor. Since 2016, she had been the Editor-in-Chief of the Romanian Journal of Cardiology, a journal of the Romanian Society of Cardiology.
Prof. Ginghină was born in Râmnicu Vâlcea, but her development and professional career were spent in Bucharest.
After graduating with honors from the Faculty of Medicine of Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in 1971, she specialized in cardiology and graduated in 1977. She won a senior staff position at Fundeni Hospital in Bucharest, currently the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases C. C. Iliescu. This was the beginning of a long and close association with this institution for the remainder of her life. During that period, cardiology changed rapidly, but the institution remained a center of clinical excellence.
Prof. Ginghină worked closely with Prof. Costin Carp to treat acute coronary syndromes and arrhythmias. She successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation about limiting necrosis in acute myocardial infarction in 1994. She was, above all, an outstanding clinician and consultant. Her brilliant mind and broad knowledge, together with her desire to help patients, were the keys to her clinical excellence.
In 1997, she started her academic career as an Associate Professor. From that moment, her preoccupations diversified, with cardiac imaging, pediatric cardiology, and pulmonary hypertension becoming her main areas of interest.
Between 2004 and 2018, Prof. Ginghină was Head of the Cardiology Department at the Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases C. C. Iliescu, the largest cardiology institution in Romania. Prof. Ginghină left her characteristic mark on Romanian cardiology: fine medical teaching, clinical research, original papers (of which she published more than 150 in peer-reviewed journals) and seminal textbooks. Prof. Ginghină mentored many generations of students and fellows, with many Romanian cardiologists having been trained under her supervision. Prof. Ginghină was a gifted physician, teacher, and scientist who was admired and regarded with profound affection by her patients, students, staff, and colleagues. Even with her modest and well-mannered nature, she was a perseverant scientist with a comprehensive knowledge of medicine.
Prof. Ginghină was President of the Romanian Society of Cardiology between 2002 and 2005, and Editor-in-Chief of the Romanian Journal of Cardiology starting in 2016. She was the National Coordinator for ESC Guidelines and the Course Director for several European courses organized in Romania together with, or endorsed by, the ESC. She also organized many national meetings, including several meetings of the National Congress of Cardiology.
Her passing is an irreparable loss for the cardiology community and for all those who worked with her. Professor Carmen Ginghină will always remain in our memory.
Prof. Bogdan A. Popescu
President of the Romanian Society of Cardiology