Mehdi Shishehbor, DO, MPH, PhD

• President, Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute, University Hospitals
• Director, Interventional Cardiovascular Center, University Hospitals
• Co-Director, Vascular Center, Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute, University Hospitals
• Professor, CWRU School of Medicine

Mehdi H. Shishehbor, DO, MPH, PhD, was appointed president of University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute in October 2020. As a nationally recognized resource for top rated care, the Institute has over 2,000 employees across 11 hospitals, 12 ambulatory health centers and multiple joint ventures, encompassing the divisions of cardiovascular medicine, vascular surgery and cardiothoracic surgery.

In 2018, Dr. Shishehbor was awarded the Carol and Arthur F. Anton Leadership Fellowship Program. He is also the Angela and James Hambrick Master Clinician in Innovation and was recognized by University Hospitals in 2020 as a Distinguished Physician for his commitment to patient care.

Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Shishehbor served as the co-chair of the Clinical Executive Committee, Director of the Cardiovascular Interventional Center, and co-director of the Vascular Center for UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute. Under his leadership in these areas, UH recruited other world-renowned physicians and has had exponential growth in quality and clinical expansion.

In addition to his leadership role, Dr. Shishehbor is an internationally known interventional cardiologist with expertise in vascular medicine and minimally invasive procedures to treat coronary, carotid and abdominal aortic aneurysms, peripheral artery disease (PVD) and venous disease. He is an expert in minimally invasive approaches to reconstruct lower extremity arteries in order to treat critical limb ischemia (CLI) and prevent amputation. Prior to joining UH, Dr. Shishehbor directed the Endovascular Program at the Cleveland Clinic from 2009 to May 2017 and trained over 40 interventional fellows and 400 physicians nationally on advanced techniques for limb salvage.

Dr. Shishehbor earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Florida International University, Miami, followed by a Doctor of Osteopathy (DO) from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He completed a master’s degree in public health at Cleveland State University in 2004 and a doctorate in epidemiology at Case Western Reserve University in 2013.

Dr. Shishehbor is a National Institutes of Health scholar and has won a number of awards by international and national organizations, including the prestigious Thomas J. Linnemeier Spirit of Interventional Cardiology Young Investigator Award and in 2009 he was awarded the VIVA/LINC Young Leader’s Award in Vascular. Currently, he serves as the co-chair of the PVD Council for Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) and as a member of PVD council for the American College of Cardiology (ACC). He was the writing member of 2017 and 2021 ACC/AHA/SCAI/SVS/SIR Guidelines for Lower Extremity Peripheral Artery Disease and a member of the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) committee for renal and peripheral intervention for SCAI in 2017.

Dr. Shishehbor is widely published on cardiovascular epidemiology, interventional cardiology outcomes and techniques in leading journals such as the Journal of American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, and Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation. He also is the author of a number of editorials, textbook chapters, co-author of a book on coronary intensive care and cardiac catheterization, and a manuscript reviewer for several prestigious medical publications, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, American Journal of Cardiology, and Archives of Internal Medicine.

As a leader in CLI and limb salvage education he served as the chair of the Masters’ Approach to Critical Limb Ischemia (MAC) Symposium in 2016 and co-founded the internationally known not-for-profit Cardiovascular Innovations (CVI) Foundation.

Dr. Shishehbor’s research interests include clinical outcomes in interventional cardiology, carotid and endovascular interventions. He has a special interest in novel minimally invasive percutaneous approaches to treat cardiac, venous and arterial diseases and has worked with a number of startup companies and early-stage devices. Additionally, he has served and is currently serving as the national principal investigator (PI) of multiple randomized trials related to vascular disease.

He is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine, interventional cardiology, vascular medicine, and endovascular/carotid intervention. Dr. Shishehbor is highly involved in family life with his wife and his two children. He was born in Iran, and his wife is from Colombia. He speaks Persian (Farsi) and conversational Spanish. He enjoys cooking, soccer and Persian poetry.

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Expertise

• Critical Limb Ischemia
• Peripheral Arterial Disease