Welcoming 4 New Faculty to Our Team
The Heart Institute continues to grow its team of seasoned medical leaders, with four physicians recently joining the faculty. They have brought with them deep experience in intensive care, quality improvement, community-based care, cardiac imaging and interventional cardiology. We are pleased to welcome them and the expertise they add to our program.
Jeffrey Alten, MD, joins the Heart Institute as a pediatric cardiac intensivist, providing clinical service in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) as well as doing research and quality improvement work. He has extensive experience in intensive care, having built the CICU at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Children’s of Alabama from the ground up over the past 12 years.
Alten went to medical school at University of Missouri and did his residency at University of Arkansas for the Medical Sciences. He completed a fellowship in pediatric intensive care at Baylor College of Medicine.
With the Heart Institute, Alten is leading a multicenter collaborative to study acute kidney injury (AKI) after cardiopulmonary bypass. The study will explore causes of and treatments for AKI, with future work on providing interventions to decrease morbidity related to AKI. He also has a quality improvement project underway in which he is leading a 29-center initiative to prevent cardiac arrest in the CICU.
Alten is excited about the opportunity to work as both clinician and researcher at Cincinnati Children’s. “My first love is to take care of patients and families in the CICU,” Alten says. “But I’m equally excited about collaborating with the outstanding resources and expertise at Cincinnati Children’s to help extend my passion to lead research and quality initiatives beyond the borders of one institution and improve outcomes in children with cardiac disease across the country and around the world.”
Sarosh (Shawn) Batlivala, MD, joins the Heart Institute as an interventional cardiologist. Batlivala graduated from the University of Florida College of Medicine and also did his pediatrics residency there, later serving as chief resident. He completed fellowships at Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia before joining the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where he most recently was appointed interim division chief.
Batlivala will also share his time between patient care and research. He has previously studied issues within the cardiac catheterization lab, including patent ductus arteriosus, post-operative valves and stent placement. He recently completed a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation. At Cincinnati Children’s, he looks forward to investigating the proteomes of children with single ventricle physiology. “Not much research has been done on proteomics in pediatric cardiology,” Batlivala says. “There’s a lot of potential in this field to find certain protein markers and help predict outcomes.” He admires the advancements that have been made in pediatric cardiology over the past several decades and is eager to continue that work within the Heart Institute.
Batlivala has held numerous national leadership positions with the American Academy of Pediatrics, including his current role as national Section Chair for Early Career Physicians, and with the Pediatric Interventional Cardiology Early Career Society (PICES).
Advanced cardiac imaging specialist Sean Lang, MD, both provides clinical care and conducts research. His specialty is CT and MRI, as well as transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography. Having completed a fellowship in advanced cardiac imaging at the Heart Institute in 2014, Lang was excited to rejoin the group as faculty earlier this year. “I had enjoyed my time here as a fellow, and I was excited about the opportunity to be a part of the cutting-edge research done here at Cincinnati Children’s,” he says.
Lang was formerly at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. He went to medical school at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and completed his residency and a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Yale. He has several studies published on the appropriate clinical use of echocardiograms.
In addition to his time in the clinic helping families find treatment through noninvasive imaging, he’ll be studying 4D flow and tissue characterization with the strong advanced imaging team at Cincinnati Children’s. Says Lang, “I enjoy having a hand in the clinical care of patients, as it helps me develop good questions for my research work.”
Pediatric cardiologist Elisa Marcuccio, MD, comes to the Heart Institute with a background in general cardiology, imaging and outreach. Her primary responsibilities are in inpatient and outpatient cardiology, as well as noninvasive imaging and perinatal care. Marcuccio’s outpatient responsibilities extend north of Cincinnati as she leads the Heart Institute’s collaboration with Kettering Medical Center, providing general pediatric cardiac care to patients in that region.
After receiving her MD from the George Washington University School of Medicine, Marcuccio completed her residency and a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She comes to Cincinnati from Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Marcuccio has a special interest in guiding families through their child’s cardiac care journey. She looks forward to continuing that clinical care at Cincinnati Children’s, as well as to taking care out into the community. She’ll also be doing coursework in quality improvement.
Marcuccio was attracted to the Heart Institute for its commitment to providing quality care and its scope of services offered. “I feel really passionate about working with a team that strives to achieve excellence in all aspects of cardiology,” she says.
