One of outgoing Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery’s final acts before retirement was to bestow a special award on Wollongong’s pioneering vascular surgeon, Associate Professor Laurencia Villalba.

Credited with saving dozens of lives in the Illawarra since pioneering a key-hole technique to treat Pulmonary Embolism (PE) eight years ago, Prof Villalba remains humble about her achievements.

As well as receiving the Wollongong Lord Mayor’s Achievement Award, Prof Villalba was recognised as one of Australia’s leading surgeons when she was presented with the prestigious Graham Copeland Medal from the Royal Australian College of Surgeons.

After migrating from Argentina, in 2008 Prof Villalba settled in Wollongong,  where she’s now the mother of three children and has given life to many many more people.

While most of us have heard of Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) when a blood clot forms in veins, usually deep inside the legs or in the pelvis, causing pain, tenderness, redness and swelling of the leg, much less is known about Pulmonary Embolism.

PE occurs when a blood clot breaks off and moves through the veins towards the heart and lungs. This can cause symptoms like shortness of breath, coughing up blood, chest pain, loss of consciousness and even death.

More deadly than breast cancer

One in three people who have PE die, and that frightening statistic hasn’t changed in the past 50 years. PE is now the third leading cause of cardiovascular death in the world and, in comparison, it takes more lives than breast cancer and prostate cancer.

Prof Villalba turned her attention to fighting PE when she saw its deadly impact on her patients. Keyhole interventions, where a straw-like tube is inserted in a vein in the groin and navigated through the heart into the lung arteries, can be used to aspirate, destroy, or dissolve the clots, saving patients' lives in the process.

Prof Villalba not only developed this pioneering technique to treat this devastating disease but also set up a Venous Thromboembolism Service in the Illawarra that now provides 24/7 care for patients with blood clots. It’s now recognised as a world-leading location for treating and beating PE. 

Raising awareness

Prof Villalba says her mission is to raise awareness about this devastating disease and to achieve health equality for patients.

She’s also heavily involved in teaching other vascular surgeons to help develop a similar service all over Australia, and she’s been advocating for a statewide network for clot retrieval through NSW Health so her life-saving procedures can be made available to everyone in Australia.

Having received the Lord Mayor’s award, Prof Villalba humbly said the recognition was a team effort and not just about her. She is, however, clearly proud that the Illawarra is leading the country in this life-saving surgery.

Her hope for the future is that by 2030 no one will die from Pulmonary Embolism.