Dra. Virginia
Matallana Royo

There are patients who arrive at the consultation with a history of months—sometimes years—of tests that “find nothing.” Real symptoms, disrupted lives, and the frustrating feeling of not being heard. Most of Dr. Matallana’s clinical activity is built, precisely, on that frontier where digestion and the nervous system intersect.

After graduating in Medicine from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and training as a specialist via MIR at the Hospital Puerta de Hierro, she completed her training at the Digestive Functional Diseases Unit of the Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, a national reference in the field. That stay marked a clear vocation: to dedicate herself to the pathologies that most require time, listening, and technical precision.

Back in Madrid, she launched digestive functional testing at the Hospital Infanta Cristina in 2009 and, since 2011, has developed her career at the Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro-Majadahonda, where she is the Coordinator of the Functional Disorders and Digestive Motility Unit. There, she has implemented techniques such as high-resolution manometry, ambulatory pH-monitoring and impedance, biofeedback, and impedance planimetry (Endoflip), an innovative tool for studying the distensibility of digestive sphincters. Recently, her Unit has been designated as a CSUR center (national reference center) for the endoscopic treatment of Achalasia in adult patients using POEM.

In the private sector, she practiced for ten years at MD Anderson Cancer Center Madrid, and since 2022, she has been part of the ICAdig team and the Hospital La Luz–Quirónsalud, where she introduced digestive functional tests. She is also a professor of the Master’s in Neurogastroenterology and Digestive Motility from AEG and ASENEM, accredited by the University of Barcelona, and an author of the reference treatise in the specialty.