Vanya Rangelova

You might come from a small country, but even with a small study, you and your team can be recognized and people will tell you, 'Yes, you did a good job.'

Vanya Rangelova, MD, PhD, is currently Chief Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Medical University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She also supports the work of the Epidemiology Department of the National Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases and works as a Hospital Epidemiologist at the MHAT “Saint Mina” Plovdiv. She was surprised and honored to be one of the first finalists from Bulgaria in this year’s International Medis Awards.

Her mother is a nurse, and every day after school, Vanya Rangelova, MD, PhD, was surrounded by doctors and nurses, so the hospital felt like her second home. She looked up to them and saw what they were doing, how they communicated with each other, and knew that this was her path, too.

In her opinion, research is a way to communicate with other medical professionals. If someone has an interesting topic in their field, they should try to study it thoroughly and share the results with the rest of the community. She believes this is one of the possible ways to improve patient care and treatment. Research is also an opportunity for Rangelova to inspire passion in her students.

Vanya Rangelova, MD, PhD, wanted to contribute to the field of pediatrics, and that was one of the reasons she decided to study ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in neonatal patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). 

In the submitted research, we were interested in the frequency, characteristics and risk factors for the occurrence of VAP in neonates in the ICU, as there are no detailed data on the characteristics of VAP in neonates in Bulgaria at the regional and national level. The findings of the current study highlight that birth weight, gestational age and length of hospital stay are significantly associated with ventilator-associated pneumonia.

Doing her work as well as she can motivates Rangelova to continue striving for success and recognition by her international colleagues, because it means her work is making a real impact and contributing to science. Another important motivation for her is being a hard-working, ambitious parent who sets a good example for her seven-year-old son.