Personal Statement

Being both an interventional cardiologist and a specialist in congenital heart disease is particularly rewarding, because some of the new procedures we’re offering to our patients are being performed in the catheterization lab.

We can do this instead of referring a patient for open-heart surgery, which requires a couple of months of recovery. This way, the patient can go home the next day.

I have a special interest in strategies to fix holes in the heart, replace valves and do other procedures that we would not have been able to do 15 to 20 years ago.

One of the major advances in the field is using catheters to replace the pulmonary valve. Many of my patients have had surgery on their pulmonary valves throughout their lives. Twenty years ago, they could have expected a lifetime of having surgery every 15 to 20 years. Now we can replace that valve through a small hole in the leg, and the patient usually goes home the next day.

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