Cryptogenic Stroke and PFO with Dr. Mustafa Ahmed, Dr. Soo Young Kwon, and Dr. Ekaterina Bakradze

MyHeart.net

When a patient has a PFO, or hole in the heart, doctors are left with a decision: to close or not to close. Dr. Alain Bouchard and Dr. Mustafa Ahmed discuss cryptogenic stroke and PFO, as well as the role of the heart-brain team, with Dr. Soo Young Kwon and Dr. Ekaterina Bakradze, both of the neurology department at UAB.
About the Team

Dr. Alain Bouchard is a clinical cardiologist at Cardiology Specialists of Birmingham, AL. He is a native of Quebec, Canada and trained in Internal Medicine at McGill University in Montreal. He continued as a Research Fellow at the Montreal Heart Institute. He did a clinical cardiology fellowship at the University of California in San Francisco. He joined the faculty at the University of Alabama Birmingham from 1986 to 1990. He worked at CardiologyPC and Baptist Medical Center at Princeton from 1990-2019. He is now part of the Cardiology Specialists of Birmingham at St. Vincent’s Health System, Ascension.
Dr. Mustafa Ahmed is a Structural Heart Specialist, Interventional Cardiologist and Scientist, and is the director of the Structural Heart Disease Program at UAB. He is a leading performer of minimally invasive heart procedures, including the Mitraclip procedure. He is credited with several first of their kind procedures and internationally recognized in areas including valvular and surgical heart disease and POTS. He was born in Nottingham, England, and went to medical school at the Victoria University of Manchester. He took postgraduate positions at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, then the Queens Medical Center. Dr Ahmed moved to Birmingham, AL, where he was the first person selected for the Physician Scientist Training Program with specialization in cardiology and interventional cardiology.
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