Top Cardiac Electrophysiologists in New York

NYU Langone Hospitals | AFib, arrhythmia risk, QT monitoring | Research ⁴

Anthony Aizer is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and practices across NYU Langone Hospitals and NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue. His clinical work covers atrial fibrillation and arrhythmia risk assessment, with a particular focus on how lifestyle and comorbid conditions interact with heart rhythm.

His 2009 first-author study in The American Journal of Cardiology examined the relationship between vigorous exercise and AFib risk in male physicians — a question that still comes up in clinical practice for active patients who develop arrhythmia ¹. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Aizer contributed to two widely cited studies examining QT interval prolongation in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. The 2020 Nature Medicine paper tracked QT changes in 84 patients and found that while QT prolongation was common, torsades de pointes (a dangerous arrhythmia) occurred in only 11 percent of those with the longest QT intervals ². A companion paper in Heart Rhythm the same year reached consistent conclusions in a separate cohort ³. These papers directly shaped how electrophysiologists monitored patients during a period of widespread off-label drug use. He also co-authored a 2015 JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology study on whether treating obstructive sleep apnea reduces AFib recurrence after ablation — a question relevant to any patient with both conditions ⁴.

Mount Sinai Hospital | Ventricular arrhythmias, refractory ablation, esophageal safety | Research ⁴

Srinivas Dukkipati is Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and sees patients at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens. His practice focuses on complex catheter ablation, particularly for patients with ventricular arrhythmias that have not responded to standard therapy.

Dr. Dukkipati led the 2019 JACC paper on intramural needle radiofrequency ablation — a technique for reaching arrhythmia circuits buried deep within the heart wall, where conventional catheters cannot deliver enough energy. The study reported meaningful arrhythmia control in a patient population that had already failed conventional ablation, with an acceptable procedural risk profile ⁶. Earlier work published in Heart Rhythm in 2012 described bipolar irrigated ablation as a way to treat refractory intramural tachycardia circuits in both atrial and ventricular locations ⁵. For patients who have been told their ventricular tachycardia cannot be ablated, Dr. Dukkipati's program is one of the places doing the most technically demanding work in that space.

He has also published on procedural safety during AFib ablation, including how the esophagus — which sits directly behind the left atrium — can be injured during posterior wall ablation. A 2011 paper in the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology described a mechanical displacement technique that moves the esophagus out of the ablation zone ⁷; a 2018 follow-up in Heart Rhythm tracked the natural history of esophageal injuries across different ablation approaches ⁸. If you are weighing an AFib ablation procedure, the complication conversation will almost certainly include the esophageal injury question, and Dr. Dukkipati's published work is part of how that risk is understood today.

Mount Sinai Hospital | Arrhythmia, sudden cardiac death prevention | Research ²

William Whang practices at Mount Sinai Hospital and has contributed research across arrhythmia and cardiovascular risk. His published work includes a 2010 European Heart Journal study examining whether positive affect — essentially emotional wellbeing — was protective against incident coronary heart disease over a 10-year follow-up period in a large Canadian population cohort. The study found that higher positive affect was associated with lower rates of coronary heart disease, independent of negative affect and established risk factors ⁹. He also contributed to analysis from the CABG Patch Trial, published in Circulation in 1999, which examined how patients died in a large randomized ICD trial following bypass surgery. That paper found that ICD therapy reduced arrhythmic death by 45 percent but had no effect on nonarrhythmic deaths — and because most deaths in the trial were nonarrhythmic, total mortality was not reduced ¹⁰. It remains a foundational paper in understanding the limits of ICD therapy for post-surgical patients.

Mount Sinai Hospital | Pulsed field ablation, AFib, leadless pacing | Research ⁵

Jacob Koruth is Associate Professor of Medicine and Cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He practices at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens. He is one of the principal investigators behind pulsed field ablation (PFA) — a next-generation energy source for AFib ablation that uses short electrical pulses rather than heat, allowing more selective tissue destruction that largely spares the esophagus and pulmonary veins.

Dr. Koruth was the first or corresponding author on four of the foundational PFA papers. His 2019 first-in-human JACC study reported that PFA achieved durable pulmonary vein isolation with good chronic safety, establishing the initial human evidence for the technology ¹¹. A 2018 JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology paper that preceded the clinical trials described the basic science of using pulsed electric fields for AFib ablation ¹⁵. Two subsequent papers extended the evidence: a 2020 JACC study showed PFA was safe and durable in persistent AFib (not just the paroxysmal form) ¹³, and a 2021 JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology paper reported favorable 1-year arrhythmia recurrence rates using a single-shot PFA catheter ¹². PFA has now received FDA clearance and is becoming one of the most-discussed energy sources in EP. If your electrophysiologist has mentioned it as an option for AFib ablation, Dr. Koruth's program at Mount Sinai did much of the clinical trial work behind the recommendation.

He also led early feasibility work on permanent leadless cardiac pacing, published in Circulation in 2014 — the first study to establish the safety and clinical performance of a miniaturized, self-contained pacemaker implanted directly into the right ventricle without transvenous leads ¹⁴.

Mount Sinai Hospital | AFib, left atrial appendage occlusion, anticoagulation | Research ³

Mohit Turagam practices at Mount Sinai Hospital and has published in arrhythmia and AFib-adjacent areas including anticoagulation management and imaging guidance during left atrial appendage occlusion procedures. His 2011 first-author paper in The American Journal of Cardiology reviewed the epidemiology and mechanisms of atrial fibrillation in competitive athletes — a patient population where AFib tends to present at younger ages and with different risk-factor profiles than in the general population ¹⁶. A 2015 first-author paper in Cardiology in Review examined circulating biomarkers that might predict which patients develop AFib after cardiac surgery, a complication that occurs in up to 40 percent of post-operative patients and significantly extends hospital stays ¹⁷.

He also contributed to a 2018 meta-analysis in the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology comparing intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) and transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) for guidance during left atrial appendage closure procedures. The analysis found ICE to be as effective as TEE and with the added advantage of avoiding the need for general anesthesia, which is required for TEE ¹⁸. For patients being evaluated for WATCHMAN or similar procedures, the imaging modality question is one your proceduralist should be discussing with you.

Mount Sinai Hospital | Left atrial appendage closure, AFib, ventricular arrhythmias | Research ⁵

Vivek Reddy directs the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service at The Mount Sinai Hospital and holds the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Professorship in Cardiac Electrophysiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His practice covers AFib, ventricular arrhythmia, and stroke prevention through left atrial appendage closure. He is among the most published electrophysiologists in the world, with an h-index of 110.

Much of Dr. Reddy's most widely cited work involves left atrial appendage (LAA) closure — a catheter-based procedure that seals off the small pouch in the left atrium where most AFib-related blood clots form. For patients with AFib who cannot tolerate long-term anticoagulation, this procedure offers an alternative route to stroke prevention. He was first or corresponding author on the pivotal JAMA 2014 paper comparing LAA closure to warfarin in patients with non-valvular AFib, which found the procedure noninferior to ongoing warfarin therapy ²²; and on the 5-year outcomes paper published in JACC in 2017, which showed that the stroke prevention benefit from LAA closure was durable over time and that the device group had lower rates of late stroke ²¹. Earlier, a 2009 Lancet paper established the initial non-inferiority case for the WATCHMAN device compared to warfarin in the PROTECT AF trial ¹⁹, and a 2014 JACC paper from the PREVAIL trial confirmed the finding in a different patient population ²⁰.

Dr. Reddy also led a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine trial showing that prophylactic catheter ablation reduced appropriate ICD shocks in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and an implanted defibrillator — one of the early studies to establish a role for ablation in ventricular tachycardia prevention in high-risk patients ²³.