Dr. Karen Sliwa-Hahnle, MD
Not yet claimedCardiologist, Heart failure specialist · Physician (MD)
Cape Town, Western Cape
Professor of Cardiology and Director of the Cape Heart Institute at the University of Cape Town, and senior cardiologist at Groote Schuur Hospital and UCT Private Academic Hospital, specialising in heart failure, cardiomyopathy and cardiac disease in pregnancy. Past President of the World Heart Federation (2019-2020) with over 450 publications.
About Dr. Karen Sliwa-Hahnle, MD
Updated Sep 20, 2026 · next review Dec 19, 2026Prof. Karen Sliwa-Hähnle is a cardiologist and heart failure specialist in Cape Town. She is Professor of Cardiology at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Director of the Cape Heart Institute, and she sees patients in the Division of Cardiology at Groote Schuur Hospital and at UCT Private Academic Hospital (https://health.uct.ac.za/cape-heart-institute/contacts/karen-sliwa-hahnle).
Her stated clinical focus is heart failure, structural heart disease including cardiomyopathy, and heart disease in pregnancy, with an emphasis on lowering deaths among pregnant women with heart conditions (https://health.uct.ac.za/cape-heart-institute/contacts/karen-sliwa-hahnle). She leads the Cape Heart Institute research groups "Cardiac Disease in Maternity" and "Heart of Africa" (https://health.uct.ac.za/cape-heart-institute/staff).
She was born in Germany, studied at the Free University of Berlin, trained in several countries and moved to South Africa in 1992 (https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/38/13/926/3098211). She previously directed the Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research in Africa at UCT (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61151-X/fulltext).
Her research includes studies of peripartum cardiomyopathy (heart failure related to pregnancy), including work on the drug bromocriptine (https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circulationaha.109.901496). She served as President of the World Heart Federation in 2019–2020 (https://world-heart-federation.org/news/meet-our-new-president-elect-professor-karen-sliwa/) and has contributed to European Society of Cardiology guidelines on heart disease in pregnancy (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40878294/).
- Director, Cape Heart Institute
- She is Director of the Cape Heart Institute and Professor of Cardiology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town. health.uct.ac.za
- Where she sees patients
- She is a senior cardiologist in the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, and also practises at UCT Private Academic Hospital. hfsa.org
- Heart disease in pregnancy
- Her institution lists her clinical focus as heart failure, cardiomyopathy and other structural heart disease, and cardiac disease in pregnancy. health.uct.ac.za
- World Heart Federation president
- She served as President of the World Heart Federation in 2019–2020, and was the first woman and first African to hold the position. world-heart-federation.org
- Pregnancy guideline reviewer
- She was the CPG Review Co-ordinator for the 2025 European Society of Cardiology guidelines on cardiovascular disease and pregnancy, and a named contributor to the 2018 version. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Research on pregnancy heart failure
- She was first author of a Circulation study evaluating bromocriptine for acute severe peripartum cardiomyopathy, and co-author of a 2025 European Heart Journal paper on bromocriptine outcomes in the EORP PPCM registry. ahajournals.org
- Publication record
- Her UCT profile reports more than 450 publications, an H-index of 108, over 120,000 citations, and 35 PhD and Masters students trained. health.uct.ac.za
- COVID-19 heart registry lead
- She was principal investigator of the World Heart Federation Global Study on COVID-19 and Cardiovascular Disease. clinicaltrials.gov
- South African society roles
- She has chaired the South African Heart Failure Association (HeFSSA) and served as President of the South African Heart Association from 2014 to 2016. hfsa.org
- Infectious disease institute member
- She is an affiliate member of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine. idm.uct.ac.za
Worth knowing
- No primary registration record, such as an entry in the Health Professions Council of South Africa register, was located during this research. This does not mean she is unregistered, only that the record was not found. health.uct.ac.za
- The institutions that awarded her MD and PhD are listed by a commercial data aggregator (an MD from UCT and PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand) but were not confirmed by a primary source. zoominfo.com
- She has no US National Provider Identifier, so no US Open Payments industry payment records could be checked. health.uct.ac.za
Sources: health.uct.ac.za · health.uct.ac.za · x.com · linkedin.com · youtube.com · youtube.com · zoominfo.com · academic.oup.com. Something wrong or out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.
Summary prepared with AI assistance from the public sources linked above, reviewed every three months. It is not a review, a rating, or an endorsement.
Practice location
Division of Cardiology, Groote Schuur Hospital / UCT Private Academic Hospital
Cape Heart Institute, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town
Cape Town, Western Cape · South Africa
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