Adj A/Prof Vitaly A. Sorokin is presently a Senior Consultant with the Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery (CTVS) at National University Heart Centre, Singapore (NUHCS). He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Surgery at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore since 2009 as well as a Visiting Professor to the Russian State Medical University since 2010.
He received MD in 1995 in USSR, defended his thesis and obtained PhD degree in 1999. As a cardiac surgeon, he came to Singapore in 2004 and spent five years to obtain the Singapore board certification in 2010 after completing the advance surgical training program in cardio-thoracic surgery. Follow successful examination at Royal College of Surgeon of Edinburgh (FRCS CTh Edin), he spent one year in Dusseldorf, Germany to sub-specialize as an aortic and minimally invasive cardiac surgeon. Currently, Adj A/Prof Vitaly is the Director of the Aortic Centre Programme at NUHCS and the Research Director of Department of CTVS.
Clinical care from his activities as a cardiac surgeon is increasingly focused on the highly specialized area of cardiac surgery - aortic surgery. It includes genetically-related aortic pathology like Marfan syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and other connective tissue disorders. The significance and ultimate objective of his clinical specialization for this group of patients is to develop scientific approaches and solutions to treat deficient connective tissues. Surgical approach is the only available solution currently and is unfortunately highly risky for patients. Understanding the alteration of connective tissue differentiation, apoptosis and growth grants us the opportunity to explore the deficient biological network in disease progression and development of complications. Multi-omic approaches with the investigation of genome, transcriptome and proteome components of the aortic wall would give us information in connective tissue disorders. The discovered tissue network and markers would be investigated for parallel changes in the patients' plasma, which is easily available for clinical screening.
Combining clinical service for aortic disease patients with strong research program is the main objective driving Adj A/Prof Vitaly's enthusiasm to develop new clinical service in NUH - National University Aortic Program, which will be unique not only in Singapore, but also in South-East Asia.
