Mount Sinai Heart in New York City has been renamed the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital, in honor of Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, who built Mount Sinai’s cardiovascular program into one of the world’s leading heart centers while advancing cardiovascular medicine around the globe.
“This name is a tribute to all Dr. Fuster has accomplished over these last 30 years and ensures that his vision and commitment to excellence will continue to guide us into the future,” Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, MBA, Director of the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital and the Dr. Valentin Fuster Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Fuster, a pioneer in the treatment and study of cardiovascular disease, remains President of the Fuster
Heart Hospital and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital. And with an updated name, Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital remains an umbrella of cardiovascular medicine services, research, and education that spans the Mount Sinai Health System. Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital at The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 4 nationally for Cardiology, Heart and Vascular Surgery, according to U.S. News & World Report® for 2024-2025. As a research hospital, it is home to some of the world-leading investigators into the factors and mechanisms underlying every facet of cardiovascular disease, and to clinical researchers studying new and emerging treatments. “There’s no question that our teams are doing work that is setting the pace for the field,” Dr. Bhatt said. “We are driving innovation collaboratively, under one roof and all that we do is centered on the patient.”
Patients and their families travel the nation, and the world, for cardiovascular care at Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital, due to its excellence in these areas and more:
Cardiovascular Surgery
In a recent recognition of its merit, the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at The Mount Sinai Hospital received the highest possible three-star recognition in all cardiac surgical categories in the 2020-2023 Society of Thoracic Surgeons Database. “It is very unusual for a program to earn a three-star rating across all surgical procedures evaluated nationally,” says David H. Adams, MD, Cardiac Surgeon-in-Chief, Mount Sinai Health System and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Professor and Chair of Cardiovascular Surgery. In addition, the Department once again received
the highest two-star safety rating
from the New York State Department of Health and is the highest volume mitral valve program in the state. “Collectively these achievements are not only a testament to the incredible skills and capabilities of our surgeons, anesthesiologists, intensivists, nurses and cardiologists, but they also reflect the incredible multidisciplinary expertise available to our patients from a broad range of professionals across the Mount Sinai Health System,” notes Dr. Adams.
In another milestone, a team of Mount Sinai cardiovascular surgeons, led by Ismail El-Hamamsy, MD, PhD, Director of Aortic Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, performed 100 successful Ross procedures in 2023—the first program worldwide to achieve this milestone in a single year. The complex Ross procedure is the optimal treatment for replacing a diseased aortic valve in adolescents and adults, because it maximizes the use of their own tissue and restores long-term life expectancy, unlike mechanical or tissue valve replacements, says Dr. El-Hamamsy, the Randall B. Griepp Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery at Icahn Mount Sinai. “This is all the more life-changing for women who are contemplating future pregnancies and for patients who lead active lifestyles,” he said.
Interventional Cardiology
Innovation, safety and high volume are hallmarks of The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, led by Samin K. Sharma, MD, Director of Interventional Cardiology for the Mount Sinai Health System, and Annapoorna S. Kini, MD, Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. For 24 consecutive years, the lab or an interventionalist have received the highest two-star safety rating from the New York State Department of Health for PCI, also known as angioplasty—one of the most common procedures for patients with coronary artery disease. Dr. Kini was the only interventionalist in the state to receive the two-star safety rating in all PCI cases and non-emergency cases, while performing 2,844 procedures in the latest period reported, December 1, 2016, to November 30, 2019. The Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory recently pioneered two innovative procedures, continuing its leadership in the field.
The first, by Samin K. Sharma, MD, involved employing the world’s smallest heart pump system to provide temporary mechanical circulatory support during high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), while the second procedure treated a patient’s uncontrolled high blood pressure with the groundbreaking Symplicity Spyral renal denervation system. “Despite taking on some of the most challenging referrals, our Cath Lab has consistently received the double-star rating,” said Dr. Kini, the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Professor of Medicine (Cardiology). “I believe that our efforts as educators and investigators—in our conferences, live cases, publications, educational applications and clinical trials—bring us to the forefront of the field.”
Electrophysiology
A journey that began nearly 10 years ago for Vivek Y. Reddy, MD, with his implantation of the country’s first single-chamber leadless cardiac pacemaker, reached fruition last year when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved of the first dual-chamber device for the treatment of bradycardia, an abnormally slow heartbeat. The AVEIR DR dual-chamber leadless pacemaker, made by Abbott, could revolutionize care for millions of people who require pacing of both upper and lower chambers of the heart. The leadless pacemaker—smaller than a AAA battery—is implanted entirely within the body. “This reduces exposure to potential lead and infection-related complications and offers a less restrictive and shorter recovery period following implantation,” says Dr. Reddy, Director of Cardiac Arrhythmia Services and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Professor of Medicine in Cardiac Electrophysiology.
Another game-changing approach has been advanced and pioneered by Dr. Reddy—pulsed field ablation (PFA). This method of treating atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, offers enhanced precision and speed compared to traditional ablation methods, while significantly reducing risks such as esophageal damage, pulmonary vein injury and nerve damage. Dr. Reddy has studied the PFA system for more than 10 years, andwas lead author of the ADVENT clinical trial, which paved the way for approval of the PFA system by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 2024. The next month, Dr. Reddy and his team performed a groundbreaking procedure at The Mount Sinai Hospital, utilizing PFA technology.
A Leader’s Past and Future
Dr. Bhatt joined Mount Sinai as a leader in cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology, highly recognized for breakthroughs in areas including interventional cardiology, heart disease prevention, vascular medicine and heart failure.
Serving as Director of the renowned Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital provides the opportunity to realize a childhood dream. At age 11, the Boston, Massachusetts, native suffered a ruptured appendix and was rushed to the local children’s hospital. “The diagnosis was initially missed in the ER, and I became septic and almost died,” he said. “Some people would have been turned off to medicine fro
m that experience. But I loved being in the hospital with the doctors and nurses during the several weeks I was there, and that’s when my fervor for medicine took hold,” Dr. Bhatt said. Later, he decided cardiology would be his specialty, mainly because of the potential to save people’s lives. “I really felt that strongly when I was stenting closed arteries that were causing heart attacks in the middle of the night.”
After graduating as valedictorian from prestigious Boston Latin School, Dr. Bhatt obtained his science degree at MIT, his MD from Cornell, an MPH from Harvard and an Executive MBA from Oxford. He trained in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and in cardiology at Cleveland Clinic. Among his many achievements, Dr. Bhatt led a trial that demonstrated the benefit of a potent intravenous antithrombotic drug during stenting, which led to its FDA and European Medicines Agency approvals.
His work also resu
lted in the first FDA-approved drug, an omega- 3 fatty acid prescription medication, to reduce cardiovascular risk among patients with elevated triglyceride levels already treated with statins—and his research has helped advance the understanding and treatment of patients with diabetes and obesity who have cardiovascular disease.
What’s ahead? Dr. Bhatt’s vision for the future of the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital prioritizes investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and in cardiovascular genetics. “I think the two disciplines will be very much coupled in the future, where we will use AI to integrate risks that we can get from a patient’s history, as we do now, but also from imaging and from genetics and from biomarkers from blood and urine specimens. We will be able to integrate that vast amount of knowledge to hopefully improve the care of the individual patient in front of us, but then also to improve the care of populations of patients in New York City and around the world.”
Learn more at mountsinai.org/heart.
