Dr. Laura Fernández Rivas

Dr. Laura Fernández Rivas is a senior anesthesiologist at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires — one of Argentina's most prestigious and comprehensive healthcare institutions, internationally recognized for the quality of its specialist medical and surgical services. With over 18 years of clinical experience, she is among Buenos Aires's most accomplished perioperative physicians, combining depth in cardiac anesthesia with expertise in regional anesthesia techniques and acute pain management.

Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires has a long tradition of European-influenced medical training and maintains close academic relationships with Italian and Spanish medical institutions. Dr. Fernández Rivas trained within the hospital's renowned anaesthesiology programme and subsequently undertook advanced cardiac anesthesia training in France at the Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris, one of France's major cardiac surgery centres.

She serves as a clinical supervisor within Hospital Italiano's anaesthesiology residency programme, which is one of Argentina's most competitive, and contributes to the Sociedad Argentina de Anestesiología's (SAA) continuing medical education programs.

Dr. Fernández Rivas completed her medical degree at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine (UBA) — Argentina's largest and most distinguished public university medical school. She undertook her anaesthesiology residency at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires and obtained specialist certification from the Sociedad Argentina de Anestesiología (SAA). She completed a cardiac anaesthesia fellowship at Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris, France. She is a Fellow of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (FESA) and a member of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists (WFSA).

Dr. Fernández Rivas provides the full spectrum of anaesthetic services across surgical specialties. In cardiac anaesthesia, she manages anaesthesia for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), valve repair and replacement, aortic surgery, and device implantation — including intraoperative TEE monitoring and management of haemodynamic instability in complex cases. In regional anaesthesia, she performs ultrasound-guided peripheral nerve blocks (femoral, sciatic, brachial plexus, TAP block, erector spinae plane block), epidural analgesia, and spinal anaesthesia, with a commitment to opioid-sparing approaches.

Her pain management practice covers acute post-operative pain through multimodal analgesia pathways and chronic pain through interventional procedures including epidural steroid injections, facet joint blocks, and coeliac plexus blocks. She also provides paediatric anaesthesia for the full range of paediatric surgical procedures at Hospital Italiano.

Dr. Fernández Rivas consults in Spanish, English, and French. Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires has an international patient programme and is experienced with patients from neighbouring South American countries, Europe, and North America — including members of the large Italian-Argentine community. For international patients undergoing elective surgery at Hospital Italiano, pre-anaesthetic video consultations for risk assessment and planning are available.

Dr. Fernández Rivas has received the SAA Award for Excellence in Anaesthesiology Education. She has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Latin American Journal of Anesthesiology and Revista Argentina de Anestesiología. She has presented at the SAA annual congress and the World Congress of Anaesthesiologists and is an active reviewer for anaesthesiology journals.