Cardiovascular Surgeons

Dr. James Abel

Head, PHC Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery Clinical Professor of Surgery, University of British Columbia. Associate Head, UBC Division of Cardiovascular Surgery

Dr Abel completed General Surgery and Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Toronto, and joined the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at St. Paul’s Hospital in 1993. He headed the Cardiac Transplant Program from 1996 until 2001, and has a clinical interest in higher risk coronary revascularization, left ventricular remodeling, and valve repair and replacement surgery as an alternative to transplantation. He was the first to do concomitant radiofrequency ablation for atrial fibrillation in the open heart in BC and is a leader in cardiac surgical training. Since arriving in BC he has been involved in outcomes analysis with the BC Cardiac Surgical Registry, and led the Cardiac Surgical Working Group of Cardiac Services British Columbia which developed and transitioned the Registry to the electronic web-based HeartIS system used today. He chairs the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Cardiac Surgery Quality Indicator group which, in partnership with CIHI, releases annual national cardiac surgical outcomes publicly.

Dr. Jamil Bashir

UBC Head, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Surgical Director, Laser Lead Extraction and Device Implantation Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery, UBC BCMA Section Head

Dr Jamil Bashir is a Cardiovascular and Transplant surgeon at St. Paul’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital with a primary academic interest in heart failure, cardiac implantable electronic devices and laser lead extraction. He is a full Clinical Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of British Columbia and the Director of the Lead Extraction Program. The St. Paul’s Hospital lead extraction program is a Western Canadian resource that manages patients from Manitoba west and is the largest program in Canada. Dr Bashir was the creator of the P6 program which has been instrumental in a complete reorganization of pacemaker device care in the province with a focus on quality.

In addition to winning the Moshier Memorial Gold medal as the top graduate from the University of Alberta Medical School, Jamil did a dual fellowship of complex device surgery in Goteborg Sweden and holds a certificate in Aortic Surgery from Houston Texas.
Dr Bashir is the principal investigator for the CLEAR (Canadian Lead Extraction Risk Study) with 2500 patients and was instrumental in the creation of the ongoing ATLAS randomized trial comparing risk of complications between transvenous and subcutaneous defibrillators.

Dr. Paul Bui

Program Director, UBC Cardiac Surgery Residency Program

Dr. Andrew Campbell

Clinical Associate Professor

Dr. Anson Cheung

Surgical Director, Cardiac Transplantation Clinical Professor of Surgery, UBC

Dr. Anson Cheung is the Director of Cardiac Transplantation of B.C. and Clinical Professor of Surgery with the University of British Columbia, Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiovascular Surgery. Practicing since 2000, he is currently on staff at St. Paul’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital. He is a graduate of the University of Manitoba with post-graduate work at Stanford University, University of Western Ontario and the University of Pittsburgh. He joined the academic staff at UBC in 2001 and St. Paul’s Hospital in 2000. His specialties include cardiac transplant surgery, mechanical circulatory assist devices, transcatheter valve therapy and off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (OPCABG). Dr. Cheung has established the VAD (Ventricular Assist Device) Program at St. Paul’s Hospital which is the first VAD program in Western Canada. He is also a leader in transcatheter valve therapy. He is currently involved in numerous research projects along with other works in progress. He was also the recipient of the Department of Surgery Concept Awards in 2003 as well as the International Society of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery President’s Award in 2010 and 2015. He continues to foster cardiac surgical education by participating in numerous symposiums and post-graduate courses worldwide.

Dr. Arthur Lee

Clinical Instructor

Dr. Kevin Lichtenstein

Dr. Samuel Lichtenstein

Clinical Professor of Surgery, UBC Regional Cardiac Program Medical Director, PHC & VCH

Dr. Samuel V. Lichtenstein is Clinical Professor of Surgery and University Head of the Division of Cardiac Surgery at the University of British Columbia. In addition to his Medical Degree, Dr. Lichtenstein holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Publications include approximately 1240 peer reviewed articles and invited reviews. Early in his career, he introduced the notion of performing open heart surgery at normothermia which challenged previously held concepts of hypothermia in open heart surgery. In 2005, Dr. Lichtenstein and his group were the first in the world to implant an aortic valve for aortic stenosis through the apex of the left ventricle in man. Catheter-based valve implantation has become a tremendously important development in the treatment of valve disease and the transapical approach allows for treatment of patients with peripheral vascular disease. The group in Vancouver has the largest experience in the world with this modality.

Dr. Lichtenstein has a research interest in myocardial protection, heart-lung interaction, peripheral vascular physiology, and myocardial mechanics.

Dr. Lichtenstein holds multiple patents. In 1998, he developed a suture-based mechanical coronary anastomosis system for Perclose. The patented methodology has been adapted for femoral artery closures after interventional cardiological procedures. In 1999, Dr. Lichtenstein co-founded Ventrica, a biotech start-up in Menlo Park, California, based on a magnetic coupling system for coronary anastomosis. More recently, he co-founded biotech start-ups in Vancouver focused on percutaneous solutions for treating atrial fibrillation, methods of reducing x-ray radiation exposure for long fluoroscopic procedures, and non-invasive lung volume reduction for the treatment of emphysema.

Dr. Jian (James) Ye

Director, Cardiac Surgery Clinical Research, UBC Clinical Professor of Surgery, UBC

Dr. Jian (James) Ye is a cardiovascular surgeon at St. Paul’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital. He is also a Clinical Professor of Surgery and the Director of Cardiac Surgery Research at the University of British Columbia. His primary clinical interest/expertise is complex mitral & tricuspid valve repair, rheumatic mitral & tricuspid valve repair, complex cardiac surgery, and transcatheter heart valve therapies. Dr. Ye is a pioneer in the development and clinical application of transcatheter heart valve therapies, including transapical aortic valve implantation (TAVI), transcatheter mitral valve replacement or repair and transcatheter tricuspid valve therapy. He has performed many first-in-human transcatheter heart valve procedures, including: the first successful transapical TAVI in the world in 2005; transcatheter aortic valve-in-valve implantation for failed bioprosthesis in 2007; TAVI for pure aortic regurgitation; and transcatheter mitral valve repair or replacement. He has educated physicians around the world in TAVI and has supervised many transcatheter aortic and mitral valve procedures throughout North America, Asia and Australia. He has also educated surgeons in different countries in heart valve surgery. His research interests include clinical outcomes of traditional and transcatheter heart valve surgery, and the development and clinical application of new medical devices. As Director of Cardiac Surgery Research, he has served as the site principal investigator for many clinical trials in cardiac surgery and transcatheter heart valve therapies. He has over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 6 book chapters, and has been an invited lecturer at numerous scientific meetings and hospitals worldwide.

Dr. Richard Cook

Dr. Mike Janusz

Dr. Jong Moo (Steve) Kim

Dr. Steve Kim is a clinical instructor in the UBC Department of Surgery and an attending cardiac surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital. His subspecialty areas of interest include surgical treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and aortic surgery.

After finishing his medical education and cardiac surgery residency training at UBC, Dr. Kim completed a fellowship in advanced cardiovascular surgery at Mayo Clinic. In 2019, he returned to Vancouver and helped establish the province’s first dedicated surgical septal myectomy program, which has since become an integral part of the HCM Clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital.

Dr. Kim is actively pursuing clinical and outcomes research, and he is currently involved in developing a provincial database for septal reduction therapy. Through the multidisciplinary collaboration at the HCM Clinic, he hopes to continue improving the quality and accessibility of comprehensive surgical care for the HCM patient population in British Columbia.

Dr. Edward Percy

Clinical Instructor

Dr. Joel Price

Dr. Joel Price is a Clinical Assistant Professor and an attending cardiac surgeon at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Price completed his residency in cardiac surgery at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He completed advanced fellowships in complex valve reconstruction at the Cliniques Universitaires Saint – Luc in Brussels, Belgium, and a second in aortic and endovascular surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. He received his Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard University. He began his career as an attending Cardiac Surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University. In 2016, he returned to Canada to join the faculty at UBC.

Dr. Price’s clinical interests include valve reconstruction and aortic and endovascular surgery. This includes general aortic surgery, aortic and mitral valve reconstruction, endovascular aortic surgery, and minimally invasive and transcatheter valve therapies. Dr. Price has a special interest in the repair of bicuspid aortic valve, including aortic valve-sparing root replacement and leaflet repair.

With a background in epidemiology, Dr. Price focuses his research on outcomes in aortic and valvular heart surgery, clinical trials and simulation in surgical education. He is a co-author on over 50 peer-reviewed publications and is the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards.

Dr. Peter Skarsgard

Head, VCH Division of Cardiovascular Surgery

Dr. Tiffany Chong

Cardiac Surgery Hospitalist at Vancouver General Hospital