Meet the EP Board: David L. Hayes, MD

Dr. David Hayes, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has authored a number of medical publications, including a book entitled Cardiac Pacing and Defibrillation: A Clinical Approach. He served as NASPE President from 1999-2000, and joined our editorial board in 2001. Since then, Dr. Hayes has remained an active participant in the electrophysiology community. Read below about his current projects.

I attended a six-year BA, MD program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Following this, my internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship were completed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with the exception of a third year of cardiology completed in New York. The year was split between six months of nuclear cardiology training at Cornell/New York Hospital and the other six months spent at Montefiore in the Bronx with Dr. Sy Furman, doing cardiac pacing. The largest challenge was trying to decide what aspect of cardiology would interest me the most. There were many areas that would potentially be interesting, but relatively early in my cardiology experience I decided that device management would be the area that I would enjoy the most. My specialty is implantable devices, including pacemakers, ICDs and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). In 1988, I was the first recipient of the E. Grey Diamond Take-Wing Award at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. In 1991, I was awarded the Alumnus of the Year at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. At this point, I am not doing anything formal in medical education other than the usual continuing medical education. Within CME, however, most of my time is spent in courses that I am involved with regarding cardiac pacing or other implantable devices. I would be interested in pursing an area outside of medicine in the future, but at this point in time, I am uncertain which area that would be. The most rewarding experience continues to be the clinical care of patients. I enjoy patient interaction and would not want to give up this aspect of medicine at any time. However, from an administrative standpoint, being President of NASPE (1998-1999) was a very rewarding experience. It was an opportunity to get to know many people throughout the pacing and electrophysiology world. It is unlikely that the evolution of technology in pacing and electrophysiology will slow at any time in the future. If anything, it will simply continue to gain momentum. At the present time, I find CRT and the evolution of this discipline the most promising and most rewarding, and I believe there will be adjunctive types of stimulation that will be in clinical use for patients with heart failure and associated cardiac abnormalities. We are involved in clinical trials at all times. We see this as an important method of keeping our EP and pacing practice invigorated. My future goals include gaining a greater expertise in cardiac resynchronization therapy and associated stimulation techniques. I think the ICDs available are already quite reliable. Longevity will most likely continue to improve. However, I suspect that within five years, we will be looking at ICD systems that are completely different than what we are used to today. I believe that people need to set some limitations on how long they will persist in trying implant a CRT device. We know that there are other approaches, i.e. epicardial, that can be used. I think that the issue of radiation exposure will become less of an issue as experience is gained and as the tools improve.