Snehal R. Patel
<p>Clinical areas of expertise include heart failure, cardiac transplantation, mechanical circulatory support.</p>
Nils A. Guttenplan
<p>Dr. Guttenplan is committed to improving the patient's quality of life and prognosis across the spectrum of heart rhythm disorders. All contemporary approaches including pacemakers, defibrillators, catheter ablations, and left atrial appendage occlusion devices are drawn upon to achieve this aim.</p>
<p>Dr. Guttenplan is the principle investigator at Montefiore in an outcomes study of a left ventricular quadrapolar pacing lead. During the study he as adapted the use of an interventional snare technique. This approach has allowed for successful left ventricular lead placement, that would not have been possible with the conventional approach. Dr. Guttenplan is also a co-investigator in the division's ablation studies.</p>
<p>Nils A. Guttenplan, MD, is an Attending Physician in the Cardiology Department at Montefiore. His clinical focus is improving the patient's quality of life and prognosis across the spectrum of heart rhythm disorders. He has an interest in all contemporary approaches to achieve this aim, including pacemakers, defibrillators, catheter ablations, and left atrial appendage occlusion devices. Dr. Guttenplan joined the Montefiore team in 2018.</p><p>Dr. Guttenplan attended New York Medical College where he received his Doctor of Medicine. In 2004, Dr. Guttenplan completed a residency in Internal Medicine at St. Vincent?s Medical Center. He completed a fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease at our Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed by a fellowship in Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology at New York University.</p><p>Dr. Guttenplan is the Principal Investigator in a study on left ventricular quadripolar pacing lead. During the study, he has developed the use of an interventional snare technique that has allowed for successful left ventricular lead placement that would not have been possible with the conventional approach. Dr. Guttenplan is also a co-Investigator in the division's ablation studies. His work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals.</p>
Mario J. Garcia
<p>Dr. Mario J. Garcia is an eminent cardiologist and leader in the development and clinical implementation of the most advanced noninvasive cardiac diagnostic technology used around the world today. A physician, researcher and educator, he is known worldwide for his innovative use of noninvasive cardiac imaging in the clinic, such as coronary CT angiography (including some of the earliest studies testing radiation-reduction strategies), echocardiography, and MRI.</p>
<p>Dr. Garcia’s research focuses on why patients with diastolic heart failure have trouble doing physical exercise and the role of screening imaging tests for predicting cardiovascular events such as heart attacks. His cardiac imaging work has contributed significantly to the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease, diastolic heart failure, cardiomyopathies and valvular heart disease. The CT coronary angiography technique avoids the use of invasive arterial catheterization to image the coronary arteries, using instead a modified CT scanner to detect even the smallest atherosclerotic plaques that can cause narrowing of the coronary vessels and lead to deadly heart attacks. Dr. Garcia tested the technology in animal and controlled human studies, which led to increased accuracy and lowered the use of radiation, both of which improved clinical effectiveness. In addition, his research findings have helped to improve the safety of manned space flights and the quality of battlefield medicine.</p>
<p>Dr. Garcia joined Einstein/Montefiore as Chief of the Division of Cardiology in 2010. He holds the Pauline Levitt Endowed Chair in Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and is Professor of Radiology and Co-Director (with Dr. Robert Michler) of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care. As co-director of the Center, Dr. Garcia has focused his attention on the cardiac health of lower income people living in urban areas such as the Bronx, where obesity, diabetes and other heart disease risk factors are common.</p>
<p>Dr. Garcia was born in Argentina and moved to the Dominican Republic when he was four years old. He attended Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Urena in Santo Domingo, where he earned both his bachelor’s degree in premedical sciences and his doctorate in medicine, completing his formal education in 1986, when he moved to the United States to train as an internal medicine resident and then a cardiology fellow at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He then pursued additional training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Cardiac Nuclear Imaging and at the Cleveland Clinic in Advanced Cardiac Imaging.</p>
<p>After two years as an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth, Dr. Garcia was recruited to the Cleveland Clinic by Dr. Eric Topol (Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA). He was initially a staff cardiologist, but became Director of Echocardiography in 2000, a position he held for the next five years. Under his tenure, the echocardiography program doubled in size to become the second largest program in the United States (behind the Mayo Clinic). Dr. Garcia was actively involved in recruiting new physicians to the program and managing the program’s budget. He also became involved in several entrepreneurial ventures, and brought CT angiography to the Cleveland Clinic. In 2005, he was named Director of Cardiovascular Imaging, leading the Cleveland Clinic to the top of cardiovascular imaging in the country at the time. In 2006, he was recruited to Mount Sinai as Professor of Medicine and Radiology and Director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Center, where he worked with Dr. Valentin Fuster. There, he once again led a successful expansion, developing a strong collaborative relationship with the Department of Radiology, a critical factor in his success.</p>
<p>Academically, Dr. Garcia is an active member of the Boards of Directors of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology, of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, and of the Intersocietal Accreditation Council, and he is a past member of the Board of the American Society of Echocardiography. He is a member of the American Heart Association, Circulation Council; a member of the Editorial Board, JACC-Imaging; the Associate Editor, American Heart Association on-line; the Editor of theheart.org Imaging section and the Editor in Chief of theheart.org (Spanish edition); a board member of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM); and serves on the American College of Cardiology's ACCF Task Force on Clinical Expert Consensus Documents. He is the winner of the Feigenbaum Award of the American Society of Echocardiography (2004); the Inge Edler Award, Madrid, Spain (2001); the Teaching Attending of the year award, Cleveland Clinic Foundation (1998); the David H. Jacobs Research Award of the American Heart Association, Northeast Ohio Affiliate (1997); and the Facultad Universitaria Dominicana Year Award.<br />Dr. Garcia is the author or co-author of numerous books, including the very recent single-author definitive text, NonInvasive Cardiovascular Imaging: A Multimodality Approach (Garcia, MJ, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010). He has also written multiple book chapters and over 160 papers on many aspects of cardiac imaging.</p>
<p>Dr. Garcia's work has been supported by extramural funding from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense (DOD), the American Society of Echocardiography, the NIH, the American Heart Association, and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dr. Garcia is a physician, researcher and educator known for his innovative use of noninvasive cardiac imaging in the clinic, including CT angiography, echocardiography and MRI. His research focuses on why patients with diastolic heart failure have trouble doing physical exercise and the role of screening imaging tests for predicting cardiovascular events such as heart attacks. <span> </span></span><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><br /> <br /> <span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dr. Garcia’s cardiac imaging work has contributed significantly to the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease, diastolic heart failure, cardiomyopathies and valvular heart disease. In addition, his research findings have helped to improve the safety of manned space flights and the quality of battlefield medicine. As co-director of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care, he has focused his attention on the cardiac health of lower income people living in urban areas such as the Bronx, where obesity, diabetes and other heart disease risk factors are common.</span></span></p>
Diagnosis and treatment of valvular heart disease, cardiomyopathies and pericardial disease.
Validation of non-invasive imaging for the study of cardiac structure and function.
<ol>
<li>Prasad A, Hastings JL, Shibata S, Popovic ZB, Arbab-Zadeh A, Bhella PS, Okazaki K, Fu Q, Berk M, Palmer D, Greenberg NL, Garcia MJ, Thomas JD, Levine BD. Characterization of static and dynamic left ventricular diastolic function in patients with heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction. Circulation. Heart failure. 2010;3:617-626</li>
<li>Fernandez-Friera L, Garcia-Alvarez A, Bagheriannejad-Esfahani F, Malick W, Mirelis JG, Sawit ST, Fuster V, Sanz J, Garcia MJ, Hermann LK. Diagnostic value of coronary artery calcium scoring in low-intermediate risk patients evaluated in the emergency department for acute coronary syndrome. The American journal of cardiology. 2011;107:17-23</li>
<li>Romero J, Xue X, Gonzalez W, Garcia MJ. CMR imaging assessing viability in patients with chronic ventricular dysfunction due to coronary artery disease: A meta-analysis of prospective trials. JACC. Cardiovascular imaging. 2012;5:494-508</li>
<li>Spevack DM, Karl J, Yedlapati N, Goldberg Y, Garcia MJ. Echocardiographic left ventricular end-diastolic pressure volume loop estimate predicts survival in congestive heart failure. Journal of cardiac failure. 2013;19:251-259.</li>
<li>Baber U, Mehran R, Sartori S, Schoos MM, Sillesen H, Muntendam P, Garcia MJ, Gregson J, Pocock S, Falk E and Fuster V. Prevalence, impact, and predictive value of detecting subclinical coronary and carotid atherosclerosis in asymptomatic adults: the BioImage study. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2015;65:1065-74.</li>
</ol>
<p>Mario Jorge Garcia, MD, is Chief, Cardiology, Co-Director, Montefiore Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care and Professor, Medicine and Radiology at Montefiore Einstein. Dr. Garcia’s clinical expertise includes the diagnosis and treatment of valvular heart disease, cardiomyopathies and pericardial disease.</p><p>After completing his Bachelor in Premedical Sciences at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Dr. Garcia continued at the institution to earn his Doctorate in Medicine in 1986. He completed a year as a physician assistant with the AIDS national research program at Laboratorio Nacional Dr. Defilló, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic before coming to the United States for further training. At St. Vincent’s Medical Center, he completed his internal medicine residency in 1990 and his cardiology fellowship in 1992. In 1993, he completed his cardiac nuclear imaging fellowship at Massachusests General Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, followed in 1994 by his advanced cardiac imaging fellowship at Cleveland Clinic Foundation.</p><p>Dr. Garcia’s research has focused on the validation of non-invasive imaging for the study of cardiac structure and function. He was a pioneer in the adaptation of multi-detector CT technology for coronary imaging. His research has been supported by extramural funding from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense, the American Society of Echocardiography, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association. He is the author or co-author of several books, book chapters and over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is also a reviewer for several national and international medical journals including <em>Journal of the American College of Cardiology, American Journal of Cardiology</em> and <em>Journal of the European Society of Cardiology.</em></p><p>Dr. Garcia is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Physicians, and is a member of several other professional societies. He has received recognition nationally and internationally for his many accomplishments, including the Feigenbaum Award of the American Society of Echocardiography (2004), the Inge Edler Award, Madrid, Spain (2001), and the David H. Jacobs Research Award of the American Heart Association, Northeast Ohio Affiliate (1997).</p>