Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Welcomes Four New Specialists to Department of Cardiology

LOS ANGELES (Dec. 27, 2022) — The Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai welcomes four new specialists to its Department of Cardiology: interventional cardiologist Aakriti Gupta, MD, electrophysiologists Eric Braunstein, MD, and Archana Ramireddy, MD, and adult congenital cardiologist Prashanth Venkatesh, MD. Each physician also holds Cedars-Sinai faculty titles.

“We are proud to announce that our world-class cardiology team continues to expand,” said Christine Albert, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai and the Lee and Harold Kapelovitz Distinguished Chair in Cardiology. “With the addition of these specialists, we’re further augmenting the diverse and distinguished expertise within the Smidt Heart Institute to provide the highest level of treatment and care to our patients.”

Gupta joins Cedars-Sinai from Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. She earned a medical degree from Panjab University in India and completed her internal medicine residency at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. She completed her general cardiology fellowship and interventional cardiology fellowship at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and pursued advanced training in structural heart disease interventions. Gupta then came to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to pursue advanced training in structural heart disease interventions and gained tremendous expertise in performing transcatheter valvular interventions in addition to complex coronary interventions.

Gupta has authored over 75 scientific publications in leading medical journals, including Nature Medicine, JAMA, JACC and Circulation. Her clinical and research interests converge at the intersection of interventional cardiology and health services research. She is passionate about developing “learning” healthcare systems that can leverage massive collections of data that are being passively collected in the electronic health record systems for improved risk prediction and outcomes, increasingly leveraging digital data sources with applications in informatics and machine learning.

Braunstein earned a medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City and completed his internal medicine residence at Mount Sinai Hospital – Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He completed a clinical fellowship in cardiovascular disease at Montefiore Medical Center–Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and in cardiac electrophysiology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital–Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.

Braunstein has been an author on multiple scientific papers and abstracts, including several as first-author, and has presented his research at national forums including the American College of Cardiology and Heart Rhythm Society. His research interests are in procedural techniques and new technologies in invasive electrophysiology and medical education.

Ramireddy comes to Cedars-Sinai from Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. She received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and completed a residency and fellowship at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. She also completed a fellowship in clinical electrophysiology at Cedars-Sinai, where she gained significant experience in the management of patients with arrhythmias, with a major focus on interventional electrophysiology

She has also been an author on multiple scientific papers and abstracts, including several as first-author. She has presented her research at national forums including the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and Heart Rhythm Society. Her work on sudden death during nighttime hours, as well as arrhythmias during COVID, has received significant attention. She also volunteered as a physician at the San Juan Bosco Clinic, a free adult primary care and specialty clinic affiliated with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Venkatesh earned a medical degree from Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar and completed his internal medicine residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He completed his fellowship in adult congenital heart disease at the Ahmanson/UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. He stayed on at UCLA and underwent additional subspeciality training with the completion of a two-year ACGME-accredited Adult Congenital Heart Disease fellowship in 2022. That training program allowed him to gain significant experience and expertise in the diagnosis and management of adults with complex congenital heart disease.

Venkatesh’s research has focused on outcomes in adults with congenital heart disease. He has been an author on several scientific papers, abstracts, and book chapters — many of them published as a first author. He has presented his research at national forums such as American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and the International Symposium of Adult Congenital Heart Disease.

The Smidt Heart Institute is ranked #1 in California for Cardiology and Heart Surgery in the 2022-23 U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals” issue. Over the past five years, surgeons at the Smidt Heart Institute have performed more heart transplants than any other medical center. Smidt Heart Institute interventional cardiologists have performed more transcatheter heart valve repairs and replacements than any other medical center. The Smidt Heart Institute team is known for treating patients with the most complex and challenging conditions, many of whom have been deemed too risky for intervention elsewhere.

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Two Heart Transplants Can’t Keep Joelle Down