Best Cardiac EP Specialists in California

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles | Adult congenital heart disease, arrhythmia

Jamil Aboulhosn directs the Ahmanson/UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. His practice focuses on adults who were born with structural heart abnormalities — a population that often develops rhythm problems years after childhood repair. Managing arrhythmias in this group requires understanding both the original anatomy and how surgical scars, patches, and residual defects create electrical substrates for reentrant rhythms.

Dr. Aboulhosn was a contributing author on the 2018 AHA/ACC guidelines for adults with congenital heart disease, published in both Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology ¹²³⁴. These guidelines — cited more than 1,500 times — define how clinicians should evaluate and manage this population, including arrhythmia monitoring, ablation indications, and device therapy. He also contributed to a multicenter AARCC study published in Circulation in 2010 that quantified the arrhythmia burden in adults with repaired tetralogy of Fallot, finding that more than 43 percent of the 556 patients studied had a sustained arrhythmia or required an arrhythmia intervention ⁵. For adults living with repaired congenital heart disease who are developing palpitations, syncope, or sustained arrhythmias, Dr. Aboulhosn's program at UCLA is specifically built around that intersection.

UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco | Atrial fibrillation ablation, pulsed field ablation

Edward Gerstenfeld is Chief of the Section of Cardiac Electrophysiology at UCSF and holds the Melvin M. Scheinman Endowed Chair in Cardiology. He specializes in catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation and ventricular arrhythmias. UCSF's EP program, named after Melvin Scheinman — who performed the first catheter ablation in the world in 1981 — has been at the center of ablation research for decades, and Gerstenfeld has carried that work forward.

Dr. Gerstenfeld was first author and corresponding investigator on the ADVENT trial, a 2023 New England Journal of Medicine study that compared pulsed field ablation to conventional thermal ablation (radiofrequency or cryo) in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation ⁸. Pulsed field ablation is a newer technique that uses electrical pulses rather than heat or cold to destroy tissue; the trial found it was noninferior to thermal ablation on the primary composite outcome at one year, with a similar safety profile. That result helped move pulsed field ablation toward broader clinical use. He also contributed to the 2017 international expert consensus statement on catheter and surgical AF ablation, co-published in Heart Rhythm and EP Europace, which is the document most EP programs use to benchmark their indications and techniques ⁶⁷. If you have AF and have been told you are a candidate for ablation, UCSF is where a meaningful portion of the evidence behind that conversation was built.

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles | Ventricular arrhythmias, cardiac sympathetic denervation, neuromodulation

Olujimi Ajijola is Professor of Medicine at UCLA and Co-Director of the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program. His clinical and research focus sits at the intersection of the nervous system and cardiac arrhythmias — specifically, how the autonomic nervous system drives life-threatening ventricular rhythms, and how disrupting that input can prevent them. He trained in both medicine and neuroscience and holds a PhD alongside his medical degree.

Dr. Ajijola is one of the researchers who helped establish bilateral cardiac sympathetic denervation as a treatment for patients with refractory ventricular arrhythmias. A 2011 JACC paper, on which he is first and corresponding author, reported outcomes in patients with electrical storm — defined as three or more sustained ventricular arrhythmia episodes in 24 hours — who had the procedure after other therapies failed ¹⁴. A follow-up Heart Rhythm study in 2013 described intermediate and long-term follow-up in a similar population, further establishing durability of the approach ¹¹. He also published a 2017 JACC Clinical Electrophysiology paper, on which he is corresponding author, examining the efficacy of stellate ganglion blockade for managing acute electrical storm ¹⁵. These are niche but meaningful interventions for patients who have exhausted medication and standard ablation options. If you or a family member has had recurrent ICD shocks or electrical storm that has not responded to conventional treatment, Dr. Ajijola's work is directly relevant to what options may remain.

Stanford Health Care, Stanford | Atrial fibrillation, left atrial appendage closure, epicardial ablation

Nitish Badhwar is Clinical Professor of Medicine in Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford Health Care. He specializes in catheter ablation for AF and ventricular tachycardia, left atrial appendage (LAA) management, and epicardial ablation — procedures that reach the outer surface of the heart to treat scar-related arrhythmias that cannot be addressed from the inside.

Dr. Badhwar has published on LAA closure approaches, a topic directly relevant to AF patients who cannot tolerate long-term anticoagulation. A 2015 Heart Rhythm paper he co-authored compared the Watchman endocardial device to the Lariat epicardial ligation system, characterizing differences in the types and clinical significance of peri-device leaks ¹⁷. Separately, he co-authored a 2015 JACC Clinical Electrophysiology paper on combined LAA ligation and ablation for persistent AF ¹⁸. He also contributed to a 2015 study in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology comparing complication rates between different needle types for percutaneous epicardial access — a technically demanding step that precedes epicardial ablation — finding that a micropuncture needle significantly reduced major complications ¹⁹. For patients who need ablation that extends to the epicardial surface, or who are exploring LAA closure as an alternative to anticoagulation, Dr. Badhwar's practice at Stanford covers both.

Stanford Health Care, Stanford | Atrial fibrillation mapping, T-wave alternans, AI-assisted electrophysiology

Sanjiv Narayan is Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Arrhythmia Center at Stanford, where he also directs the Atrial Fibrillation Program and an NIH-funded training program (T32 CHIP) focused on computational approaches to heart disease. His research sits at the edge of EP and signal processing — developing tools that map AF more precisely and predict arrhythmia risk in individual patients.

Dr. Narayan is first and corresponding author on a 2012 JACC paper describing the ablation of localized AF sources — rotors and focal impulse sources identified using a proprietary mapping system called FIRM — in 107 patients ²¹. The trial reported a substantially higher freedom from AF at one year in patients who received FIRM-guided ablation compared to conventional ablation alone. He is also a leading researcher on T-wave alternans, a subtle beat-to-beat variation in the ECG waveform that signals elevated risk for ventricular arrhythmias. A 2006 JACC paper, on which he is first and corresponding author, reviewed the evidence linking T-wave alternans to sudden cardiac death risk ²⁴; a 2011 JACC paper updated that evidence base ²². He has also contributed to the literature on deep learning applied to cardiovascular medicine, including a 2019 European Heart Journal paper on machine learning methods in cardiac care ²³. For patients with complex or drug-resistant AF, or those being evaluated for arrhythmia risk after a cardiac event, Dr. Narayan's program is among the most research-active in the state.

Practices in Thousand Oaks, CA | Atrial fibrillation ablation, AF in heart failure, pulmonary vein isolation

Andrea Natale is Executive Medical Director of the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute and National Medical Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology for HCA Healthcare. He also sees patients in Thousand Oaks, California. He is among the most cited electrophysiologists in the world, with more than 2,000 published works and an h-index of 136 — a measure of sustained citation impact that places him in a small group globally.

Much of Dr. Natale's most influential work addresses when and how ablation should be used relative to medication for AF. A 2005 JAMA trial, on which he is first author, compared radiofrequency ablation to antiarrhythmic drugs as first-line therapy for symptomatic AF — an early landmark study that helped shift the field toward ablation earlier in the treatment course ²⁷. A 2008 New England Journal of Medicine study examined pulmonary vein isolation in AF patients with heart failure, a population that tends to respond poorly to antiarrhythmic drugs ³⁰. A 2016 Circulation trial, on which he is first and corresponding author, compared ablation directly to amiodarone in persistent AF patients with an implanted device and congestive heart failure ²⁸. He also published a 2012 JACC paper examining whether left atrial appendage morphology predicts stroke risk in AF patients — a question still relevant to how EP programs think about anticoagulation and LAA closure ²⁹. For patients with AF that has not responded to one or more medications, or who are trying to decide whether ablation is right for them, Dr. Natale's research portfolio spans the key comparisons directly.