Biography

Giorgio Antonio Feruglio, M.D., FESC, FACC, graduated from medical school in 1952 and trained in internal medicine, cardiology, and radiology at the University of Padua, and trained further as a research fellow in cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania and then the University of Toronto. He returned to his native region of Udine, where he eventually became director of the Institute of Cardiology at the Regional Hospital. Later, he was the president of the Italian Association of Hospital Cardiologists and president of the Italian Society of Preventive Cardiology. He founded and co-edited the Italian Journal of Cardiology, and was a member of the steering committee of major randomized prospective trials in preventive cardiology. He was a founder and chairman of the European Working Group of Cardiac Pacing. He directed and organized surveys of pacemaker practices throughout the world, which were published and presented as a major component of each of the World Symposia on Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology. This survey material has been published in PACE, of which he has been a member of the Editorial Board since 1978. In 1981, he organized the Second European Congress on Cardiac Pacing in Florence and edited the proceedings of the conference, Cardiac Pacing: Electrophysiology and Pacemaker Technology. He collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO), and in 1977 he founded the Italian section of the WHO, affiliated with the still ongoing Martignacco Project. From 1984, he was a principal investigator of the WHO-Monica Project and was also project leader for the Community Learning Action for Coronary Risk (CLARA). In addition to serving on the Editorial Board of international journals, he published more than 400 articles in the medical literature. Above all, he was a teacher who encouraged the development and education of young cardiologists. He was open and friendly with a wide international group of colleagues and an excellent mediator among the inevitable differences of perspective between them. Dr. Feruglio is survived by his wife and three daughters, and will be missed by the cardiology, pacemaker, and electrophysiology communities worldwide.

- Seymour Furman, M.D.