Dr. Lishan Aklog Is Named As One of New York's Top Black Doctors

Dr. Lishan Aklog, Associate Chief of Cardiac Surgery at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, has been named as one of The Top Black Doctors in New York by The Network Journal, a magazine dedicated to educating and empowering Black professionals and small business owners. Dr. Aklog, 38, is the only heart surgeon named and is one of only five doctors selected to be profiled.

Dr. Aklog specializes in the surgical treatment of all types of heart disease but is particularly passionate about the increasing role of new technologies that facilitate performing “minimally invasive” procedures. He is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on this type of surgery, which aims to correct heart problems and relieve suffering through smaller incisions and results in less trauma and a more rapid recovery for the patient. He lectures extensively on this topic and directs courses to teach other surgeons these new techniques.

“Heart disease is currently the number one killer in America, and heart surgery is our most common major surgical procedure, with over 500,000 surgeries performed each year,” said Dr. Aklog. “Despite the fact that African-Americans are disproportionably affected by this epidemic, we are 30%-60% less likely to receive life-saving treatments such as heart surgery, even after taking into consideration factors such as socioeconomic status. This was recently highlighted in a landmark report on racial disparities in health care by the Institute of Medicine.” He added that, “Without proactive solutions, these disparities are likely to widen as we push the technologic envelope with new costly devices.”

Dr. Aklog's academic and clinical pedigree is remarkable. He was born in Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest nations, into a family of considerable prominence and achievement. His father was the country's first cardiologist, and his mother was the country's first woman to receive a graduate university education, at Harvard. Two years after arriving in the United States, fleeing political violence in his country, Dr. Aklog enrolled at Harvard College at the age of 15. He continued on to Harvard Medical School where he received his medical degree and completed his clinical training in cardiothoracic surgery before joining the Harvard faculty as its youngest heart surgeon ever.

Soon afterwards, Dr. Aklog joined the first wave of heart surgeons to embrace “off-pump” or “beating-heart” coronary bypass surgery, which eliminates the need to stop the heart and put the patient on a heart-lung machine. Today, he performs this surgery on nearly every bypass surgery patient. Dr. Aklog was also one of the first few surgeons in the United States to use surgical robots in patients undergoing heart surgery. The robot does not perform the surgery but enables the surgeon to work with better precision in tightly confined areas, making the most of evolving minimally invasive techniques. Other high-tech tools in his armamentarium include “anastomotic devices” which automatically connect blood vessels on the heart without using sutures and a high-powered laser that can offer relief to patients who are not candidates for bypass surgery or stents.#

Reprinted with permission of ISHIB, Atlanta, Georgia.