Robert Montgomery, MD, chair of the Department of Surgery and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, became a heart transplant patient after a series of cardiac arrests and life-threatening arrhythmias. “I basically died seven times,” he recalls in this Vital Signs podcast.

Haunted by the same genetic heart condition that claimed his father and an older brother, Dr. Montgomery talks about persevering to become a leading transplant surgeon, learning to control his fear and stress, and receiving a heart transplant from a donor with hepatitis C.