Kevin Heist

Dr. Heist received his MD and PhD degrees from Stanford University School of Medicine, and received an MMSc degree from the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences Training Program. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at UC San Francisco, and he then completed Fellowships in both Cardiolovascular Disease and Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is board certified in Cardiovascular Disease and Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology. He is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Physician in Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology at MGH. He is the Program Director for the Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship at MGH.

His clinical and research interests focus on catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias including atrial fibrillation (AF), supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) and ventricular tachycardia (VT), as well as implantation and followup of cardiac device therapy including pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and cardiac resyncrhonization therapy (CRT) devices. He has published over 150 peer reviewed papers on these topics, and is frequently invited to give educational lectures on these subjects at major national and international meetings.

His practice is currently accepting new patients.

Clinical Interests

• Treatment of cardiac arrhythmias
• Catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation
• Catheter ablation of supraventricular tachycardia
• Catheter ablation of ventricular tachycardia
• Cardiac resynchronization therapy (biventricular pacing)
• Implanted cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) therapy
• Pacemaker therapy

Medical Education

• MD, Stanford University School of Medicine
• PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine
• Residency, UC San Francisco
• Fellowship, Massachusetts General Hospital

Board Certifications

• Cardiovascular Disease
• Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology

Research Summary

There are two major foci to my research efforts. The first focus is identification of predictors of outcome from cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) to treat congestive heart failure. Optimization of these factors, including patient selection, device placement issues including lead site selection, device programming and patient follow-up, has been demonstrated to result in improved outcomes after CRT implantation. The second major focus is identification of anatomical and procedural variables associated with success of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) and ventricular tachycardia (VT). I am actively pursuing investigation in both of these areas at the present time, and this work has resulted in multiple publications and presentations at national meetings.