Joseph Albert Dearani, MD

Dr. Joseph Dearani is Chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at the Mayo Clinic and Professor of Surgery in the Mayo College of Medicine. He grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut and completed his undergraduate education at Fordham University in New York City (BA Biology and Spanish). He attended Medical School at Georgetown University (graduated AOA) and then did his General Surgery residency at Georgetown University Medical Center. During that interval, he spent two years as a surgical research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He completed his Thoracic Surgery residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota followed by a Congenital Cardiac Surgery fellowship at Loma Linda University. He returned to the Mayo Clinic to join the staff in 1997 where he is currently Professor of Surgery and the Sheikh Zayed Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases.

His primary clinical interest includes pediatric and adult congenital heart surgery. He has specific expertise with Ebstein’s anomaly, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, robotic heart surgery and multi-redo cardiac surgery. He is the author or co-author of approximately 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 38 book chapters. His research interests include innovative valve repair techniques, heart failure and regenerative medicine (stem cell) therapies in congenital heart disease.

In addition to his busy clinical practice he has been devoted to humanitarian outreach activities in pediatric cardiovascular surgery. He has been the co medical director of Children’s Heartlink, a prominent non government organization devoted to charitable outreach activities in pediatric cardiovascular disease. He has helped develop programs in India, China, Brazil, and Colombia.


Responsibilities outside of the Mayo Clinic include:

President, Congenital Heart Surgeons’ Society
President Elect, Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Vice-Chair, American Board of Thoracic Surgery