Gold Medallist

Prof. Carnevale says of himself that the most important gift he has received in his life was to have had the good fortune to be born into and raised by an incredible family. His grandparents were Italian immigrants who settled in Sao Paulo after the first world war. His father and mother worked incredibly hard and spared no effort to raise and educate their four children. Francisco is the second oldest child and the only medical doctor in the family. His sister is a biomedical researcher and the two businessmen brothers continued the company created by their father. Carnevale met his beautiful  wife Ana Maria who is an endocrinologist when she came to him asking for a hormonal venous sapling. They have been married for 20 years and have two wonderful children, Marina (18 yo) and Rafael (15 yo). Prof. Carnevale has often said that his family is his pride and joy.

Working at the University of Sao Paulo has been a dream come true for Prof. Carnevale, as it has given him the opportunity to build his career among the most important physicians, researchers, and teachers in Brazil. The university has offered him the possibility to travel all over the world, and to establish the Interventional Radiology Section at the Radiology Department. Carnevale travelled to several university centers in the US (South Carolina, MD Anderson – Houston, California, Pittsburg, Chicago) and Europe (San Sebastian, Canary Island and Zaragoza) to learn new skills, further extend his knowledge, and build strong relationships with well-known interventional radiologists. He is eternally grateful to his mentors, including Renan Uflacker, Sydney Wallace, Albert Zajko, Horacio D’Agostino, Wilfrido Castaneda, James Donaldson, Mariano de Blas, Manuel Maynar, and Miguel Angel De Gregorio, among others. From these experiences he was able to establish a center of excellence team at the University of Sao Paulo who has been key in disseminating interventional radiology all over Brazil. More than 100 residents and fellows have been trained by his team until now.

Dr. Carnevale received his PhD in 1999 after a clinical fellowship in Spain and it resulted in his first publication in CVIR on percutaneous endovascular treatment of chronic iliac artery occlusion. He became a Full Prof.essor at the University of Sao Paulo Medical School in 2014 due to his research on prostatic artery embolisation for benign prostatic hyperlplasia.

Since 2002, the Chairman of the Radiology Department, Prof.essor Giovanni Cerri, has supported him in consolidating interventional radiology as a specialty in Brazil. Prof. Carnevale is Professor of Radiology and Surgery, and the Chief of the Interventional Radiology Section at the University of Sao Paulo Medical School and Syrian-Lebanese Hospital. He has a special interest in liver transplant-related interventions with an emphasis on paediatric intervention. In 2007, after running pre-clinical studies with dogs at Harvard University, he established prostate artery embolization as a new minimally invasive alternative of treatment for patients suffering from lower urinary symptoms related to an enlarged BPH prostate at the University of Sao Paulo with supervision and support of the Chairman of the Urology Department Prof.. Miguel Srougi. The first patients were treated in 2008, and the results of this new technique were published in CVIR in 2010. Prof. Carnevale developed a dedicated catheter for prostate embolisation called Carnevale Prostate Catheter (CPC) manufactured by Merit Medical.

He has published more than 110 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has an h-index of 33 with more than 3,000 citations. Prof. Carnevale has also written two books on interventional radiology and given 70 international presentations.

Prof. Carnevale served as the President of the Brazilian Society of Interventional Radiology (SOBRICE) from 2009-2010, building a strong relationship with CIRSE, as shown by the join “CIRSE meets SOBRICE” session in Lisbon in 2009. At CIRSE 2014, Prof. Carnevale had the honor of presenting the Josef Roesch Lecture and in 2016, he received the CIRSE Award of Excellence and Innovation in Interventional Radiology. Last year, Prof. Carnevale was honored with the Renan Uflacker Award by SOBRICE. To Prof. Carnevale, one of his most important achievements of his life, however, was placing an inferior vena cava filter in his mother and embolizing the prostate of his father in a move he himself calls crazy, but one of the best ways to show his gratitude for everything his parents did for him.

Prof. Carnevale is very proud to have built and worked with a brilliant team of interventional radiologists, like his friends Dr. Airton Mota and Dr. Andre Assis. He says that that the multidisciplinary nature of the specialty, allowing him to work alongside students, residents, fellows,  and assistants, and working with research and innovation is a continuous inspiration to him, filling him with energy and a constant source of pride to keep working, teaching, innovating, and learning. To Prof. Carnevale, it has all been a success achieved through team work!!!