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.