Description of Clinical Expertise

I am an attending physician in the Division of Cardiac Critical Care at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. My clinical training is in both Pediatric Cardiology and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. My clinical interests are in the management of respiratory failure in the setting of congenital heart disease, myocardial failure, mechanical support, and anticoagulation. I am currently leading a Cardiac Center quality improvement effort to develop clinical practice guidelines for the management of 1) pleural effusions following the Fontan operation, and 2) acute and chronic chylothorax.

Description of Research Expertise

My research focuses on the pathophysiology of cardiomyopathy in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Specifically, I endeavor to improve our understanding of the functional abnormalities in myocardial performance and reserve capacity that result from dystrophin deficiency, and develop more sensitive non-invasive techniques for detecting these abnormalities early in the course of disease. These functional assays will allow us quantify loss of physiologic reserve in DMD, and improve our ability to detect and characterize early stage cardiomyopathy. Initially developed for DMD, these metrics will also prove valuable for evaluating cardiovascular reserve and response to therapy in other pediatric cardiomyopathies, as well as in patients with surgically palliated congenital heart disease.