Nader Moazami, MD, professor of cardiothoracic surgery, chief of the Division of Heart and Lung Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support, and surgical director of heart transplantation at the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, has been named one of the nation’s top 25 healthcare innovators by Modern Healthcare magazine, one of the healthcare industry’s most respected periodicals.

Dr. Moazami has been recognized for his efforts to continually advance the heart transplantation program to address organ shortages through clinical innovation, such as the groundbreaking study on donation after circulatory death, or DCD, as a method of organ preservation. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Moazami received emergency clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to add an inline filtration system to the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machines that sustained critical oxygen levels among people experiencing severe COVID-19–related pneumonia. He collaborated with his cardiothoracic surgery colleagues to evaluate the cytokines associated with COVID-19 and to study gene expression in patients receiving ECMO therapy.

He was additionally recognized for leading a heart transplant program with one of the shortest wait times and best one-year post-transplant survival rates in the region. In 2020 and 2021, the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients rated the NYU Langone Transplant Institute as the top heart transplant program in the country based on wait times, wait list, and post-transplant survival.

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