Patients at a high risk for surgery with moderate to severe mitral regurgitation, severe mitral stenosis or moderate mixed mitral valve disease have a new, minimally invasive option at the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute (VHVI). Starting in June, VHVI began implantations of the M3 device, the first Food and Drug Administration-approved transseptal transcatheter mitral valve replacement.
Daniel Muñoz, MD, MPA, Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine) and Executive Medical Director of the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute, has been selected as President-Elect of the American Heart Association (AHA) Southeast Board of Directors.
The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has recognized Vanderbilt University Hospital with its 2026 Gold Performance Achievement Award on its Chest Pain/Myocardial Infarction registry. According to the ACC, the award program “recognizes hospitals participating in the registry who have demonstrated sustained, top-level performance in quality of care and adherence to guideline recommendations.
The AHA Target: AS registry is the first national registry to track data and evaluate the quality of upstream care processes before valve replacement for patients with AS. Brian Lindman, MD, MSCI, Associate Professor of Medicine, is the first author of the first major report on the registry, which was recently published in the AHA journal Circulation.
The Vanderbilt Transplant Center performed 960 solid organ transplants in 2025, the most ever completed by a single center in one year in the United States.
The Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute (VHVI) is part of a clinical trial to treat patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) using an innovative new device. The device has the potential to reduce the length of stay for ADHF patients by measuring their response to diuretic medication in real time using algorithms, allowing the process of removing fluid to be more efficient.
The new research leadership structure “will allow the Department of Medicine to support a breadth of research with an eye to funding diversification, recruitment in strategic areas, and mentorship of trainees and faculty in all forms of research,” said department Chair Anna Hemnes, MD.
Most maternal cardiovascular deaths are preventable, and over half of them occur after pregnancy. But postpartum care has tended to be underemphasized, and at least 40% of patients don’t attend any postpartum care appointments, said Kathryn Lindley, MD, Director of the Vanderbilt Health Women’s Heart Center.
Aaron Aday, MD, co-director of Vascular Medicine at Vanderbilt Health, is the first and corresponding author of the paper, which was published May 27 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
A multi-institutional group has identified a “signature” of metabolic molecules associated with exercise-induced physiologic deficits that, when released into the bloodstream, signal heightened heart failure risk. Eric Gamazon, PhD, and Ravi Shah, MD, Department of Medicine faculty, are part of the research group.
