Victor Sebastian Costache, picked for Health Minister (bio)

On October 24, 2019, Prime Minister-designate Ludovic Orban unveiled the composition of his cabinet to be submitted to Parliament for a vote. Victor Sebastian Costache was picked for the position of Health Minister.

A specialist in cardiovascular, thoracic and pulmonary surgery, Victor Sebastian Costache was born on March 18, 1974, in Iasi.

He is a class of 1998 graduate for the Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iasi. In 2004 he completed a master's degree course in anatomy at the J. Fourier Faculty of Medicine in Grenoble. Between 2004 and 2006, he was a resident physician at the Cardiovascular Surgery Service, the Vascular Surgery Service and the Cardiac Surgery Service, all at CHU Grenoble, France. On May 20, 2009 he defended his doctoral thesis on optimising diagnosis and treatment methods in mediastinitis. In 2014, he became an associate professor at the Victor Papilian Medical Faculty of the Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu.

Between August 2000 and November 2001, he was a resident cardiothoracic surgeon at the Gr. T. Popa University in Iasi, after which he decided to leave for France. In October 2002, he was admitted to the National Residency Competition (DES) in Paris. Between 2001 and 2003 he was a resident doctor at the Thoracic and General Surgery Service in Toulouse, and in 2003 at the Digestive Surgery Service in Grenoble and at the Traumatology Service in Grenoble.

In November 2006, he was awarded a Thoracic Surgery specialist diploma by the Bucharest Faculty of Medicine.

He returned to France, where he continued as resident physician, specialist doctor and a thesis supervisor at Grenoble (2006-2010). He then practiced cardiovascular and thoracic surgery as a primary physician at CHRA Annecy (2010-2013).

In 2014, he suspended all medical activity in France and settled with his family in Romania, to practice in Sibiu.

Since June 2014, he has been the head of the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Section at the Polisano SRL Clinic in Sibiu, becoming medical director at the same privately-owned hospital, according to www.clinicapolisano.ro.

He is the chairman of the Cardiovascular Surgery Board of the Ministry of Health (since October 2015) and chairman of the Romanian Society of Endovascular Surgery and Transcatheter Valve Therapy (TAVR).

He is the author or co-author of 25 specialist works and studies, in 1994 - 2016. He has five presentations in the period 2004-2007 at the College of Vascular Surgery, in Grenoble and Narbonne, having attended many Vascular and Thoracic Surgery national and international congresses in Iasi, Sibiu, and cities in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Serbia, the US, Turkey and Brazil.

He is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records for world's first complex aortic dissection treated endovascularly, in Sibiu in 2014.

In 2011 he became a full member of the French College of Cardio-Vascular and Thoracic Surgery - the French Society of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery. In 1999 he became a member of the College of Romania's Doctors.