Christopher O'Connor
Falls Church, USA
Dr. Christopher O’Connor is the President of the Inova Schar Heart and Vascular, a 5-hospital system that serves over 2 million people in the Northern Virginia / Washington, DC area. He is a Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at Duke University, and was previously the chief of the Division of Cardiology and director of the Duke Heart Center. Under his leadership, Duke Heart Center was ranked the #4 Heart Center in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Dr. O’Connor, who first joined the Duke faculty in 1989, is an internationally recognized cardiologist and authority on heart failure. His clinical investigations have dramatically expanded the understanding of numerous aspects of cardiac function and dysfunction, including the influence of depression and stress on heart failure patients. His research has led to profound insights into both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic therapies to treat heart failure and has had a direct impact on the lives of thousands of patients. Dr. O’Connor was one of the first investigators to lead initiatives to study therapies in acute decompensated heart failure, which has led to a number of novel therapeutic interventions. He was the Principal Investigator of the landmark HF-ACTION clinical trial, which studied exercise training in more than 2,000 heart failure patients, and eventually led to a change in the international guidelines, change in the national reimbursement of cardiac rehabilitation for heart failure patients by CMS, and validation of two novel biomarkers that were later approved by the FDA. Dr. O’Connor was an editor of the textbook, Managing Acute Decompensated Heart Failure, the first one published on the topic. Founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure. Dr. O’Connor was elected as Master of the
