His life

Forty years
in heart medicine

To his colleagues he is Dr. Mohanty. To his friends, he has always been PK.His story in five chapters.

Chapter one

The training years

Professor Mohanty's lifelong journey into medicine began in Pittsburgh, with a residency in internal medicine at UPMC Mercy Medical Center, and went on at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in the nation's capital. He did his fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at Bergen New Bridge Medical Center, a Rutgers affiliate, and found the work that would fill the next forty years.

He joined the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University, as an instructor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine, and took up a post on the attending staff of the veterans' hospital in Richmond. He rose through the academic ranks: associate professor, with tenure, and then full professor of medicine, a chair he held at VCU from 1991 to 2000 and again from 2004 to 2009. Along the way he became board certified in internal medicine, then in cardiovascular medicine, and later in medical management too; he has been a certified physician executive since 2000. His ground as a clinician was high blood pressure, heart failure and transplant, and the ultrasound imaging of the heart.

Chapter two

The clinic years

In 1980 he took charge of the hypertension program at the Richmond veterans' hospital, and he ran it for fifteen years. It was a real team: nurses with special training, a pharmacist, a program assistant. They cared for the hardest cases of high blood pressure, kept a careful record of every patient, and took part in the VA's national clinical trials. Grants from the American Heart Association and from hypertension research funds kept it going.

The work did not stop at the hospital door. He helped start the Richmond Area High Blood Pressure Center, a clinic for people in the city who had no insurance they could afford: care, in time, for high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. He sat on its board from 1983 to 1987. The clinic is still there. It is called the Healthy Heart Center now, on Cary Street, and it still cares for people in Richmond and the counties around it who would otherwise go without.

Chapter three

The transplant years

In the early 1980s the Richmond veterans' hospital became the first heart-transplant center in the whole VA system. Dr. Mohanty was there for it. He worked beside the surgeons who made it happen, Dr. Szabolcs Szentpetery and Dr. Richard Lower, then chair of cardiovascular surgery. His part was the patients, before and after, and the research that taught the field how a transplanted heart behaves. Papers from those years, in Circulation, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and in the New England Journal of Medicine, changed how doctors understand the nerves and reflexes of a new heart, and of a heart in advanced failure. It is the work that made him a cardiologist known across the country for heart failure and transplant.

From 1989 to 1999 he also directed the heart failure and transplant program at VCU's medical center, under Dr. Hermes Kontos, who chaired cardiology then. Between the two hospitals, Richmond became a place the field looked to for innovation and leadership.

In the same years, as director of the hospital's non-invasive cardiac laboratory, he built its heart imaging from a first two-dimensional echo machine into a full modern lab: Doppler, transesophageal studies, stress echo, and later tissue Doppler and 3D imaging on two state-of-the-art machines. By the end of the 1990s it was a lab known across the country, where new cardiology faculty and fellows did ultrasound research that filled the journals. Two of them, Dr. Kwame Akosah and Dr. Thomas Porter, went on to academic cardiology at major university medical centers of their own.

Chapter four

The builder years

Some doctors treat patients. Some teach. Some build. Dr. Mohanty did all three, and the building years came next.

As chief of cardiology for the Central Virginia VA from 1990 to 2000, he led the service through its biggest growth. Two new cardiac catheterization labs. A new electrophysiology lab, with two full-time specialists doing the most complex procedures of the day. For the first time, fellows training in interventional cardiology and electrophysiology rotated through the VA, alongside the general cardiology trainees. He served on the VA's research and development committee, on the university's review board, and on the committee that decides promotion and tenure in the department of medicine.

In 2000 he went south. For four years, at the C.W. Bill Young VA Medical Center in Florida, he was chief medical executive and co-chair of the deans' committee for the region's VA network, and professor of medicine at the University of South Florida. He changed how doctors were recruited and how faculty were appointed, with teaching, research, and patient care in mind. Against the grain of a large institution, he got a new catheterization lab and an interventional program running in a short time. A new 21-bed emergency department. Automated pathology labs. Better radiology at Bay Pines. And he sat on committee after committee across the network, to join up care, teaching, and research.

Then home to Richmond. From 2006 to 2009 he directed cardiology at the McGuire VA Medical Center, one of the large, busy heart services in the central VA system: interventional cardiology, electrophysiology, imaging, heart failure and devices, and heart transplant on site. He raised the service's performance measures, put the invasive nursing and technology staff under one supervisor, and opened a new electrophysiology lab with the latest bi-plane imaging. And he recruited the people who would carry it on: a superbly trained interventional cardiologist, and a strong academic leader as the next chief. He left the service well placed for the years ahead, and a good place to learn for the residents and fellows who train there.

Chapter five

The teaching goes on

Through all of it, he taught. Medical students, residents, fellows. Lectures across the city, the state, the country, and abroad. He reviewed for the journals he published in: the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, the American Journal of Cardiology, the Journal of Echocardiography.

And through all of it, he asked questions. As lead investigator and co-investigator he ran basic and clinical research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the VA's cooperative studies program, and he took part in the major multi-center trials in heart failure and high blood pressure whose results shape how those patients are treated today.

He gave his time, too. Ten years as a volunteer with the American Heart Association in Virginia: chair of its research awareness task force, then vice president, then two years as its president. And ten years on its board of directors.

Today he is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, at the Pauley Heart Center he first knew as the MCV Heart Center. More than two hundred scientific papers, abstracts, and book chapters carry his name. And now, with Laxmi, he has made a gift so that the teaching goes on after him: a lectureship in advanced heart disease, for the fellows who come next.

Fellowship awards
  • FACC · Fellow, American College of Cardiology
  • FACP · Fellow, American College of Physicians
  • FAHA · Fellow, American Heart Association, Council on Circulation and Basic Science
  • FAHA · Fellow, American Heart Association, Council on Clinical Cardiology
  • FASA · Fellow, American Society of Angiology
  • Physician Scientist Member, Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography
  • ACPE · Certified Physician Executive, American College of Physician Executives
Selected papers

More than two hundred scientific articles, abstracts, and book chapters carry his name. The major papers appeared in rigorously peer-reviewed journals: the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Physiology, Circulation, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Alongside the writing ran the work itself: patient care in the hypertension and heart failure programs, clinical research, the teaching of medical students and house staff, and invited lectures across the city, the state, the country, and abroad. A selection follows.

  1. Mohanty PK, Sowers JR, Beck FWJ et al. Catecholamine, renin, aldosterone and arginine: vasopressin responses to lower body negative pressure. Cardiovascular Pharmacol 1985; 7:1040-1047.
  2. Mohanty PK, Sowers JR, McNamara C, et al. The effects of diltiazem on hormonal and hemodynamic responses to lower body negative pressure and tilt in patients with mild to moderate hypertension. Am J Cardiol 1985; 57:28H-33H.
  3. Mohanty PK, Sowers JR, Thames MD et al. Myocardial norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine concentration after cardiac transplantation in dogs. J Am Coll Cardiol 1986; 7:419-424.
  4. Mohanty PK, Thames MD, Ballon BJ, Kawaguchi A, Lower RR. Afferent re-innervation of the canine cardiac auto transplantation. J Am Coll Cardiol 1986; 7:414-418.
  5. Mohanty PK, Thames MD, Arrowood JA et al. Impairment of cardiopulmonary baroreflex following cardiac transplantation in humans. Circulation 1987; 75:914-921.
  6. Mohanty PK, Sowers JR, Thames MD. Effects of hydrochlorothiazide and diltiazem on reflex vasoconstriction in hypertension. Hypertension 1987; 10:35-42.
  7. Sowers JR, Mohanty PK. Effect of advancing age on cardio-pulmonary baroreceptor function in man with established hypertension. Hypertension 1987; 10:274-279.
  8. Mohanty PK, Sowers JR, McNamara C, Thames MD. Reflex effects of prolonged cardiopulmonary baroreceptor unloading in humans. Am J of Physiology 1988; 254:R320-R324.
  9. Mohanty PK, Arrowood JA, Ellenbogen KA, Thames MD. Neurohumoral and hemodynamic effects of lower body negative pressure in patients with congestive heart failure. Am Heart J 1989; 118:78-85.
  10. Ellenbogen KA, Kapadia BS, Walsh M, Mohanty PK. Plasma atrial natriuretic factor is increased during VA pacing. Am J Cardiol 1989; 64:237-238.
  11. Arrowood JA, Mohanty PK, Hodgson JM, Szentpetery S, Thames MD. Ventricular sensory endings mediate reflex bradycardia during coronary arteriography in humans. Circulation 1989; 80:1293-1300.
  12. Ellenbogen KA, Thames MD, Mohanty PK. New insight into pacemaker syndrome gained from hemodynamic, humoral and vascular responses during ventriculo-atrial pacing. Am J Cardiol 1990; 65:53-59.
  13. Porter TR, Ekberg DL, Rea RF, Fritsch JM, Mohanty PK. Sympathetic-parasympathetic interrelations in heart failure. J Clinical Investigation 1990; 85:1362-1371.
  14. Scherrer U, Vissing SF, Morgan BJ, Ring S, Hanson P, Mohanty PK, Victor R. Cyclosporine induced sympathetic activation and hypertension after heart transplantation. New England J Med 1990; 323:693-699.
  15. Arrowood JA, Kline J, Simpson PM, Pippin JJ, Quigg RJ, Nixon JV, Mohanty PK. Modulation of the QT interval: effects of graded exercise and reflex stimulation. J Appl Physiol 1993; 75:2217-2223.
  16. Porter TR, Taylor D, Cycan A, Fields J, Bagley CW, Mohanty PK. Endothelium dependent pulmonary arterial responses in heart failure: influence of pulmonary hypertension. J Am Coll Cardiol 1993; 22:1418-1424.
  17. Porter TR, Taylor D, Pandian NG, Nixon JV, Vetrovec GW, Mohanty PK. Pulmonary arterial dynamics in congestive heart failure in humans: significance of pulmonary arterial stiffness. J Vasc Med Biol 1993; 4:105-114.
  18. Akosah KA, Funai JT, Porter TR, Jesse RL, Mohanty PK. Left atrial appendage contractile function in atrial fibrillation: influence of heart rate and cardioversion to sinus rhythm. Chest 1995; 107:690-696.
  19. Akosah KO, Olsovsky M, Kirchberg D, Salter D, Mohanty PK. Dobutamine stress echocardiography predicts cardiac events in heart transplant patients. Circulation 1996; 94:II-283-II-288.
  20. Akosah KO, Mohanty PK. Dobutamine stress echocardiography in orthotopic heart transplant recipients. J Am Coll Cardiol 1996; 27:953-954.
  21. Akosah KO, McDaniel S, Hanrahan J, Mohanty PK. Dobutamine stress echocardiography done early after transplant predicts development of allograft coronary artery disease and outcome. J Am Coll Cardiol 1998; 31:1607-14.
  22. Akosah KO, Mohanty PK. Role of dobutamine stress echocardiography in heart transplant patients: a review. Chest 1998; 113:809-15.
  23. Topaz O, Bailey NT, Mohanty PK. Application of solid-state, pulsed-wave, mid-infrared laser for percutaneous revascularization in heart transplant recipients. J Heart Lung Transplant 1998; 17:505-510.
  24. Topaz O, Janin Y, Bernardo N, Bailey NT, Mohanty PK. Coronary revascularization in heart transplant recipients by excimer laser angioplasty. Lasers Surg Med 2000; 26:425-431.
  25. Topaz O, Perin EC, Jesse RL, Mohanty PK, Carr ME, Rosenschein U. Power thrombectomy in acute coronary syndromes. Angiology 2003; 54:457-458.
  26. Stambler BS, Akosah KA, Mohanty PK, Wood MA, Ellenbogen KA. Myocardial ischemia and induction of sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmias: evaluation using dobutamine stress echocardiography-electrophysiology. J Cardiovascular Electrophysiology 2004; 15:901-907.
  27. Topaz O, Polkampally PR, Mohanty PK et al. Excimer laser debulking for percutaneous coronary intervention in left main coronary artery disease. Lasers Med Sci 2009; 24:955-60.