Dr. Lishan Aklog
Dr. Lishan Aklog is Director and Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at The Heart and Lung Institute of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona and Chairman of EmpowHer's Medical Advisory Board.
Dr. Aklog was born in Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest nations, into a prominent and highly-achieving family. His father was the first cardiologist to practice in Ethiopia, and his mother was the country's first woman to receive a graduate university education, which she earned at Harvard.
As a teenager, Dr. Aklog fled the political violence in Ethiopia, and came to the United States. Two years later, at the age of 15, he enrolled in his mother’s Alma Mater. He continued on to Harvard Medical School where he received his medical degree and completed his clinical training in cardiothoracic surgery before joining the Harvard faculty as its youngest heart surgeon ever.
Dr. Aklog was a cardiothoracic resident at Brigham and Women’s/Boston Children’s Hospital, an Associate Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and he completed international fellowships in London, England and Paris, France.
At the beginning of his impressive career, Aklog joined the first wave of heart surgeons to embrace "off-pump" or "beating-heart" coronary bypass surgery, which eliminates the need to stop the heart and put the patient on a heart-lung machine. Today, he performs this surgery on nearly every bypass surgery patient with whom he works.
Dr. Aklog was also one of the first few surgeons in the United States to use surgical robots in patients undergoing heart surgery. The robot does not perform the actual surgery but enables the surgeon to work with better precision in tightly confined areas, making the most of evolving minimally invasive techniques.
Dr. Aklog specializes in the surgical treatment of all types of heart disease but is particularly passionate about the increasing role of new technologies which facilitate performing "minimally invasive" procedures. He is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on this type of surgery, which aims to correct heart problems and relieve suffering through smaller incisions and results in less trauma and a more rapid recovery for the patient. He lectures extensively on this topic and directs courses to teach other surgeons these new techniques.
