Wissam Derian, MD, FACC

The lead­ing cause of death in Amer­i­ca is heart dis­ease. My inter­est in the heart began dur­ing my under­grad­u­ate stud­ies when I took a class on the anato­my of the heart. I found the intri­ca­cies of the organ to be fas­ci­nat­ing, and I was struck by the com­plex­i­ty of a mus­cle so cen­tral to our func­tion­ing. The heart, I believe, is unfor­tu­nate­ly one of the most under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed aspects of the human body, despite being the most essen­tial. With­out thor­ough, robust car­dio­vas­cu­lar edu­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion strate­gies, more peo­ple will be at risk of devel­op­ing treat­able con­di­tions. I treat my patients with respect and hon­esty, the same way I would like my fam­i­ly treated.