Joan Gavaldà

Dr. Gavaldà, Senior Consultant of Infectious Diseases Department at Hospital Vall d’Hebron (Barcelona) is the Coordinator of "Antimicrobial Resistance Research- VHIR Laboratory". By the end of 2019, Dr. J.Gavaldà held 136 peer-reviewed publications and over 3,942 citations (h- index: 36). http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9829-3141 Our Group has a long history of conducting therapeutic efficacy studies using animal models of infection. The philosophy of the Group with its studies in animal models is to try to find answers to the questions that are generated in clinical practice, so that from the results try to carry out clinical trials that, if satisfactory, can improve clinical practice. He started his projects in 1992 with models of endocarditis by S. aureus and E. faecalis. Subsequently, projects have been carried out with the models , invasive aspergillosis and recently in the model of catheter infection with S. aureus, Candida spp. and S. epidermidis. An example of the group's findings is the treatment of E. faecalis endocarditis with or without high resistance to aminoglycosides. Based on a clinical situation detected in the mid-1990s in the clinic, two animal model studies of experimental endocarditis were conducted that demonstrated that the association of ampicillin and ceftriaxone is effective in treating this infection. A clinical trial was subsequently conducted and published in Annals of Internal Medicine, followed by a cohort study in Clinical Infectious Diseases. This therapeutic strategy is currently accepted in the Guidelines of the Reference Medical Societies and has recently been published in the latest editions of the reference books on Infectious Diseases (Mandell's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases) and Internal Medicine (Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine). For the past 6 years he has been leading the ThermoShot/FlashShot Project.