Our Team
Mr Nicola Viola
Mr Viola is currently the clinical lead for the Congenital Cardiac Surgical Unit and the senior congenital cardiac surgeon at UHS. He chairs the Congenital Cardiac Board of Clinical Leads and he is clinical surgical lead for the extracorporeal life support (ECLS) program at UHS.
Mr Viola undertook his medical training in his home country of Italy before training in cardiothoracic surgery in Israel. He initially joined the trust in 2005 as a cardiothoracic fellow, completing his training with a congenital surgical fellowship in Toronto, before returning to Southampton in 2010.
Areas of interest include neonatal surgery, complex reconstructive surgery and the Norwood operation. Mr Viola combines his clinical practice with an intense academic and teaching activity. He has authored several textbooks in cardiothoracic surgery, peer review articles and regularly speaks and teaches in the UK and abroad. He is an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Southampton.
Mr Antonio Ravaglioli
Mr Ravaglioli completed his medical and surgical training in Italy before moving in the UK. He spent two years at Papworth as a surgical fellow to improve my experience in transplant and mechanical circulatory support (ECMO and VAD), joining UHS in 2015 as a cardiothoracic fellow with special interest in congenital cardiac surgery. In 2019 he returned to Italy as a locum consultant congenital surgeon at Ospedale del Cuore in Italy, but rejoined UHS as a consultant surgeon in February 2021.
Areas of interest include neonatal, aortic root and valve surgery.
Dr Tara Bharucha
Dr Tara Bharucha is a consultant paediatric and fetal cardiologist, and lead paediatric cardiologist at University Hospital Southampton. She graduated from Cambridge University in 1997, and after a period working in New Zealand, undertook paediatric training in Cambridge, Great Ormond Street and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Subsequently she trained in paediatric cardiology in Southampton and spent a year as the heart failure, transplant and pulmonary hypertension fellow at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Dr Bharucha undertook a further fellowship in echocardiography and fetal echocardiography at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Her initial consultant post was at Leeds General Infirmary, and she moved back to Southampton to take up her current post in 2012. Her research interests include cardiomyopathy and echocardiography. She is an examiner for the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) Accreditation in Echocardiography in Congenital Heart Disease.
Anne Banning
Anne Banning is a senior Cardiac Physiologist specialising in Paediatrics and congenital echo at Southampton University Hospital. She trained in adult echocardiography in London and worked within industry as a cardiac ultrasound product specialist. She has held adult accreditation with the British Society of Echocardiography for over twenty years and holds the European EACVI accreditation in CHD.
She has been Organising Faculty for the Birmingham/Southampton Congenital Heart echo course for the last 9 years and has helped facilitate the learning interface between echocardiographic imaging, anatomical specimens and computational 3D modelling.