Emile Mehanna, MD

Clinical Assistant Professor
Division of Cardiology

Fellowship Director in Cardiology

Dr. Emile Mehanna is a board-certified interventional cardiologist and vascular specialist. He is Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of the Fellowship in Cardiology, at the LAU Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine and LAU Medical Center — Rizk Hospital.

Soon after his graduation from the American University of Beirut Medical School in 2009, Dr Mehanna moved to Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., where he completed a research fellowship in invasive imaging at the cardiovascular imaging core laboratory of the Case Western Reserve University (2009-2011), followed by a residency in internal medicine (2011-2014) and a fellowship in cardiology (2014-2017). He then joined Brown University for his interventional cardiology fellowship (2017-2018) before pursuing a vascular medicine and intervention fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston (2018-2019).

He is certified by the American Boards of Internal Medicine, Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology. He is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (FSCAI). He has won numerous awards and distinctions including the resident and fellow research awards of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine/ Department of Medicine for his work on three-dimensional atherosclerotic plaque assessment, and the Fellow of the Year Award at University Hospitals Case Medical Center and the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center, Cleveland.

Emile has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed articles as well as five book chapters, and he is a reviewer for several scientific journals. The focus of his research is the development of modern percutaneous coronary interventional techniques, notably the use of intravascular imaging, and specifically optical coherence tomography for the diagnosis and treatment of coronary and vascular disease.

Selected Publications

Mehanna E, Abbott JD, Bezerra HG. Optimizing percutaneous coronary intervention in calcified lesions: Insights from Optical Coherence Tomography of atherectomy. Circ Cardiovasc Interv. 2018 May;11(5):e006813. doi: 10.1161/CIRCINTERVENTIONS.118.006813.
Mehanna E, Li J, Patel S, Parikh SA. The future of intravascular imaging: Are we primed to detect vulnerable plaques? Curr Cardiovasc Imaging Rep (2017) 10: 10. doi:10.1007/s12410-017-9407-3
Elmore JB, Mehanna E, Parikh SA, Zidar DA. Restenosis of the coronary arteries: Past, present, future directions. Interv Cardiol Clin. 2016 Jul;5(3):281-293. doi: 10.1016/j.iccl.2016.03.002. Epub 2016 Jun 21.
Mehanna E, Attizzani GF, Nakamura D, Nishino S, Fares A, Aoun R, Costa MA, Bezerra HG. Impact of neointimal calcifications on acute stent performance during the treatment of in-stent restenosis. Arq Bras Cardiol. 2016 May;106(5):419-21. doi: 10.5935/abc.20160068.
Mehanna E, Hamik A, Josephson RA. Cardiorespiratory fitness and atherosclerosis: Recent data and future directions. Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2016 May;18(5):26. doi: 10.1007/s11883-016-0580-7.
Chamié D, Bezerra HG, Attizzani GF, Yamamoto H, Kanaya T, Stefano G, Mehanna E, Wang W, Abdul-Aziz A, Fujino Y, Dias M, Simon DI, Costa MA. Incidence, predictors, morphological characteristics and clinical outcomes of stent edge dissections detected by Optical Coherence Tomography. JACC Cardiovasc Interv. 2013. Aug;6(8):800-13.
Mehanna E, Bezerra HG, Prabhu D, Brandt E, Chamié D, Yamamoto H, Attizzani GF, Tahara S, Van Ditzhuijzen N, Fujino Y, Kanaya T, Stefano G, Wang W, Gargesha M, Wilson D, Costa MA. Volumetric characterization of human coronary calcification by frequency domain optical coherence tomography. Circ. J. 2013; 77(9):2334-40.
Stefano GT, Mehanna E, Parikh SA. Imaging a spiral dissection of the superficial femoral artery in high resolution with optical coherence tomography-Seeing is believing. Catheter Cardiovasc Interv. 2013 Feb; 81 (3): 568-572.
Mehanna E, Attizzani GF, Kyono H, Hake M, Bezerra HG. Assessment of coronary stent by optical coherence tomography, methodology and definitions. Int J Cardiovasc Imaging. 2011 Feb;27(2):259-69.
Tahara S, Bezerra HG, Baibars M, Kyono H, Wang W, Pokras S, Mehanna E, Petersen CL, Costa MA. In vitro validation of new Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography. EuroIntervention. 2011 Feb;6(7):875-82.

View Dr. Mehanna’s publications on PubMed.

Professional and Research Interests

Interventional Cardiology
Peripheral Vascular Disease
Modern Percutaneous Coronary Intervention
Intravascular Imaging: Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS)
Coronary Physiology
Coronary Calcification

Education and Training

Bachelor’s degree, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, 2005
M.D. degree, American University of Beirut, 2009
Research Fellowship in Intravascular Cardiac Imaging, Cardiovascular Imaging Corelab, Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., 2009-2011
Residency in Internal Medicine, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 2011-2014
Fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 2014-2017
Fellowship in Interventional Cardiology, Lifespan Cardiovascular Institute, Rhode Island & The Miriam Hospitals, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., 2017-2018
Vascular Diagnostics and Interventions Fellowship, Division of Cardiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 2018-2019

Certifications

American Board of Internal Medicine (A.B.I.M)
American Board of Internal Medicine — Cardiovascular Medicine
American Board of Internal Medicine — Interventional Cardiology

Memberships

Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC)
Fellow of the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (FSCAI)
American Heart Association (AHA)
European Society of Cardiology (ESC)
Lebanese Order of Physicians
Lebanese Society of Cardiology

Honors

Dean’s Honor List at the American University of Beirut, 2002 to 2004
Research Award - Residents Category, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Medicine, 2012
Research Award - Fellows Category, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Medicine, 2015
Cardiology Fellow of the Year Award, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center, Cleveland, 2015

Keywords

interventional cardiology, ischemic heart disease, coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, claudication, percutaneous coronary intervention, percutaneous peripheral intervention, acute myocardial infarction, MI, heart attack, chest pain, hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, abnormal stress test, echocardiography, angiography, angioplasty, modern coronary intervention, Optical Coherence Tomography, OCT, intravascular ultrasound, IVUS, drug-eluting stent, Fractional Flow Reserve determination, FFR, left ventricular assist device, rotational atherectomy, orbital atherectomy, shockwave lithothripsy, virtual histology, coronary calcification, abnormal calcium score, blocked stent, coronary physiology, heart failure, valve disease, atherosclerosis