Emory Offers Top Heart And Lung Failure Program For GA Residents

Emory Healthcare has a clear goal in mind: to make sure no one has to leave the state of Georgia for a heart or lung transplant, or for mechanical circulatory support. That's why Mani Daneshmand, MD, was appointed as the director of the Emory Heart & Lung Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support programs.

When Dr. Daneshmand came to Emory Healthcare from Duke University Medical Center, Emory's heart and lung transplant, mechanical circulatory and ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) programs were consolidated into one comprehensive program — to improve care coordination for patients and their families and to provide world-class transplant and life support services.

We sat down with Dr. Daneshmand to learn more about why he came to Emory and his vision for the future.

Why did you decide to come to Emory?

What excited me the most was the huge potential for addressing an unmet need for the residents of Georgia. Georgia is underserved when it comes to the needs of thoracic transplant patients, including heart transplant, lung transplant, ECMO and mechanical devices. People are leaving the state to get care in Alabama, North Carolina or Florida.

I saw that there was a commitment from Emory to build an outstanding program that would deliver the care residents in the state need. It made me excited to lead that initiative and really make a difference for patients in need of a lung or heart transplant or assistance from mechanical devices, such as ventricular assist devices (VADs) or ECMO.

Why were the heart, lung and mechanical assistance device programs brought together?

Traditionally, heart transplant, lung transplant, mechanical support and ECMO have been independent services, run by different physicians and different teams. These therapies, however, represent a spectrum of care as opposed to isolated silos. Often, these patients are on similar medications, have similar nursing, rehabilitation or intensive care needs. By bringing these services together, we can provide better care to patients and offer improved outcomes along with driving cost efficiencies.

What accomplishments from Duke are you most excited to bring to Emory?

One of the things that I’d like to bring here is the development of a cohesive team — the collaboration across disciplines that’s necessary to have a highly productive, functional advanced organ failure service. Emory is already a very collaborative institution, and that culture makes it easy to break down silos that naturally exist in health care.

Why is multidisciplinary care important for patients?

A team that is functioning as a unit allows you to see patients together and make decisions more quickly. For example, when you have a patient in ICU, all the attending physicians can stand in the room at once and get to the bottom of what’s happening or what needs to happen. You can address antibiotics, dialysis, rehabilitation — whatever the next steps should be — all at once. Sharing this knowledge also ensures no one is missing anything and can truly address every aspect of a patient’s care. By transforming to a multidisciplinary team that includes the principle decision-makers right there in the room, we’re able to reduce what was a two- or three-hour process to a 15-minute conversation right at the patient’s bedside.

What are your goals for the Heart & Lung program at Emory Healthcare?

Our first — and most important — goal is to provide superior care that will allow us to make sure nobody leaves the state of Georgia to get advanced lung and heart failure care. I want us to be the best, most reliable and most nimble program in the southeast.

The second goal is to start a fellowship to train surgeons and providers to approach care the same way we do here at Emory. We are a reputable, well-known academic medical center, and we need to bring that to heart and lung failure care.

Third, I want to push us forward in cutting-edge research around end-organ failure, to improve outcomes in heart and lung transplants. Ex vivo perfusion allows you to keep the transplanted organ alive outside the body before surgery to further evaluate the suitability and health of the organ. There is also research that suggests you can treat organs outside the body, before transplantation, to make them even healthier for surgery. These are the types of activities we are going to soon become involved in.

What's your vision for this program?

I see a bright future for Emory Healthcare and for the heart transplant, lung transplant and mechanical circulatory support programs at Emory. We will be a national leader in high-quality, high-volume clinical care, but we will also be a national leader in innovation and development. Our future depends on innovation. We don’t want to get comfortable. We will continue to improve access to care, the quality of care, and the technologies we have to deliver care. There is no one better poised or hungrier to do this than Emory, and we will continue to rise to this challenge.
This is an exciting time for Emory and for our community.

Learn More About Emory Healthcare's Heart & Lung Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support Programs