Cardiac Surgery: Research
Among the Top-Funded Programs by NIH
Cardiac surgery research at the CardioVascular Institute is among the top-funded programs of its kind by the National Institutes of Health, with one of only a few NIH-funded training grants for cardiovascular surgery research. A sample of current research:
Active Clinical Research Programs
- Intraoperative protection of the myocardium (Sidney Levitsky, MD, and James McCully, PhD). Using molecular biology techniques, the study seeks to determine why women have a higher mortality following heart attacks and open heart surgery.
- Autogenic mitochondria: surgical cardioprotection (James McCully, PhD, and Sidney Levitsky, MD). This study uses autogenic skeletal muscle mitochondria to treat myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury following heart attacks and open heart surgery to reduce morbidity and mortality.
- Emerging valve technologies, including St. Jude Medical’s Epic biologic valve (All surgeons)
Other Research Interests
- Novel treatment of atrial fibrillation (Kamal Khabbaz, MD, and Robert Hagberg, MD)
- Minimally invasive valve technologies (all surgeons)
- Ventricular assist device technology
- Basic research
