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Dr. Georg Wieselthaler, a heart and lung surgeon, is director of the Heart Transplant Program and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at the UCSF Heart & Vascular Center. He is one of the world's leading experts in mechanical circulatory support for patients with end-stage heart failure and has performed and supervised more than 350 heart transplants. He also has extensive expertise in implanting ventricular assist devices (VADs), which help failing hearts pump blood.

Wieselthaler, a native of Austria, earned a medical degree at the University of Vienna, where he completed a residency and surgical training. He also completed advanced training in transplantation at the Vienna heart transplant and lung transplant programs.

Wieselthaler has been involved in the development of ventricular assist pumps and a total artificial heart. He has trained surgeons worldwide in implantation techniques and the use of VADs, and he has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Wieselthaler is a member of many national and international medical societies. He is president-elect of the International Society for Rotary Blood Pumps. He is on the board of the European Society for Artificial Organs and former president of the Austrian Society for Implantology and Tissue Integrated Prosthesis. In April 2011, he was named director of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation.

Read a Q&A with Wieselthaler.

  • Education

    University of Vienna School of Medicine, 1987

  • Residencies

    University of Vienna General Hospital, 1995

  • Academic Title

    Professor

Clinics I work with

Advanced Heart Failure Comprehensive Care Center

400 Parnassus Ave., Fifth Floor
San Francisco, CA 94143

Cardiac Surgery Program

See our two Bay Area locations and learn more about the program.

Center for Aortic Disease

400 Parnassus Ave., Suite 501
San Francisco, CA 94143

Heart Transplant Program

400 Parnassus Ave., Fifth Floor
San Francisco, CA 94143

Mechanical Circulatory Support

400 Parnassus Ave., Fifth Floor
San Francisco, CA 94143

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