Gustavo Zubieta-Castillo

Who is Gustavo Zubieta-Castillo?

Professor Dr. Gustavo Zubieta-Castillo MD. is a Bolivian physician, high altitude medicine expert, physiologist, army surgeon, writer, painter, who has been named as the "Mountain Guru" at the St. John's Medical College in Bangalore, India.

He has worked on high altitude physiology. Being born at 3800m and then studying medicine at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in the city of La Paz, at 3513 m above sea level, all his work has focused on initially high altitude physiology and later evolved to high altitude pathology. He proposed new concepts and understanding of what was known as Chronic mountain sickness. This pathology characterized by an increase of red blood cells, cyanosis, ventilatory and respiratory alterations with pulmonary hypertension and hypertrophy of the right ventricle seen at high altitude, above the normal values for such altitude, was originally affirmed to be due to "loss of adaptation".