Dr. Anjali Fields

Dr. Anjali Fields received her undergraduate and medical degree from the Seven Year Liberal Arts/Medical Education Program at Boston. She completed her internal medicine residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and served as chief medical resident from 2008 to 2009. She worked with Susan Wiegers, MD, and James Kirkpatrick, MD, studying appropriate use of echocardiography and published “Application of appropriateness criteria in outpatient transthoracic echocardiography” in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography. She is currently chief fellow for the Division of Cardiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Fields continues her work in appropriate use of imaging techniques evaluating inpatient stress testing in both nuclear cardiology and echocardiography. Under the guidance of Richard Shannon, MD, Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, she has also researched and published work related to her interest in heart failure and myocardial metabolism in several national publications, including Circulation Heart Failure, Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition & Metabolic Care, Clinical Cardiology, and Current Hypertension Reports.

As a third-year fellow, Dr. Fields is completing advanced clinical training in echocardiography. She has pursued her clinical and research interests in pulmonary hypertension, under the mentorship of Paul Forfia, MD, and is collaborating with the New England Research Center on a study involving Simian Immunodeficiency Virus effects on pulmonary vasculature, along with researching pulmonary arterial hypertension. Dr. Fields is also studying the right ventricular contractile pattern in various post-operative patient cohorts, including cardiac transplant and coronary artery bypass surgery patients, as well as the hemodynamic effects of inhaled pulmonary vasodilator therapy in post-operative cardiothoracic surgery populations.

Dr. Fields is pursuing training in palliative care with respect to advanced heart failure, and is researching advanced directive use in outpatient heart failure clinics. She has been an invited guest speaker for the "Ethics of the Heart: Challenges in the Treatment of Advanced Heart Failure" symposium hosted by the Penn Cardiovascular Institute and Center for Bioethics. In addition, she has authored related publications, including "Medical ethics and the art of cardiovascular medicine" (Lancet 2010).

Alongside her fellowship, Dr. Fields is enrolled in Penn's Clinical Center for Epidemiology and Biostatistics Clinical Research Certificate Program, and plans to pursue additional clinical training in advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. She also has a strong interest in medical education and therefore, works with pre-clinical and clinical medical students at various levels in the Perelman School of Medicine.