Prof Ascione is the Chair of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Bristol and an active senior Consultant Adult Cardiac Surgeon at the Bristol Heart Institute, University Hospital Bristol-Weston NHS Foundation Trust. He trained in Naples (Italy) and in Bristol from 1994 to July 2022.  He has performed so far >4000 surgical procedures as Chief Operator.

He has secured > £58M in research grant and capital bids as PI or co-PI. Prof Ascione has a long-standing interest in first-in-human trials in complex adult cardiac surgery patients aimed at testing new surgical techniques and treatments, including beating heart coronary surgery, myocardial protection techniques, preoperative volume replacement therapy, intraoperative low frequency ventilation and autologous stem cell approaches, to reduce postoperative mortality and complications in patients with Diabetes, Obesity, Ageing, Renal and Respiratory disease, acute or chronic heart attack. This has resulted in > 90% of his surgical procedures being based on these new interventions that he has contributed to develop and validate in >15 phase I&II randomized controlled trials and >20 case cohort studies. The impact of his clinical research is shown here.

As a translational researcher he is developing a new polymeric heart valve to address the limitations of current artificial valves, a new myocardial protection approach during open-heart surgery to help patients with impaired hearts, and better arterial grafts to help patients undergoing coronary and peripheral bypass grafting.  He is contributing to lift the lid on impaired myocardial microcirculation in humans. He has trained/supported >40 junior clinical fellows/academic scientists and postgraduate students.