Aida Venado

Dr. Aida Venado is a pulmonary and critical care doctor whose driving goal is to help patients with end-stage lung disease live longer. Her areas of special interest include interstitial lung disease, lung transplantation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a treatment in which a machine provides oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from the blood of critically ill patients.

A native Spanish speaker, Venado enjoys being able to enhance care for Spanish-speaking patients by removing language and cultural barriers.

Venado studies how to extend life expectancy for patients undergoing lung transplant. As part of a collaboration with the lung transplant team at UCSF, she is examining how a patient's physical status changes – often moving rapidly from frail to robust – after the surgery. She is also studying restrictive chronic lung allograft dysfunction, a fatal condition that can develop after lung transplant in which the received organ becomes scarred and loses function.

After earning her medical degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Venado completed a residency in internal medicine at Emory University. She then completed a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, followed by a fellowship in advanced lung disease and lung transplant at UCSF.

Venado belongs to the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation and American Thoracic Society.

With a passion for learning, Venado believes people can learn from everyone and everything around them. Meeting people from different cultures, backgrounds and races has enriched her personally and professionally, and she believes that a diversity of ideas has the power to make the world a better place.