Annapoorna S. Kini, MD, MRCP, FACC
Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory
Director, Structural Heart Disease Program
The Mount Sinai Hospital
Director, Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Program
Zena and Michael A. Wiener Professor of Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“I wanted to be a physician right from when I was a little girl. And more important, not just a physician, I wanted to do something with my hands,” says Annapoorna S. Kini, MD, MRCP, FACC, one of nine accomplished physicians and researchers who received the 2019 Jacobi Medallion—one of Mount Sinai’s highest awards—and an internationally acclaimed leader in the field of percutaneous coronary intervention and heart valve therapy. “You could save lives with the procedures, and that is why I chose it.”
“If you want to achieve something, you stay focused, determined, and to achieve that it takes time,” says Dr. Kini. “My goal was that you stay at one place, which was Mount Sinai, and it gave me the opportunity.”
Dr. Kini is known for her expertise in performing complex coronary interventions and has contributed substantially in making The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory one of the busiest and best in the world.
“Dr. Kini has really raised the field of interventional cardiology in the nation, and globally,” says Samin K. Sharma, MD, FACC, FSCAI, Senior Vice President, Operations and Quality, Mount Sinai Heart; Director, Interventional Cardiology, Mount Sinai Health System; President, Mount Sinai Heart Network; and Anandi Lal Sharma Professor of Medicine, Cardiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Adds Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs for the Mount Sinai Health System: “She has made our cardiac catheterization laboratory one of the best in the world. So she is a great clinician and also a great teacher. She has a family of trainees that have now become experts in their own right.”
Dr. Kini is an excellent teacher dedicated to the teaching of both cardiology and interventional fellows.
“She is an innovator. She takes what she learns, in the cardio cath lab, and she brings it to the scientists for scientific research,” says Mary Ann McLaughlin, MD, MPH, MSH ’96, Medical Director, Cardiac Health Program, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine (Cardiology), Department of Population Health Science and Policy, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “As a mentor, Dr. Kini strives for the best. And the trainees realize that they learn so much from her. They come out as some of the best cardiologists in the country.”
“My current project right now is what is called a bifurcation stenting, where we are doing imaging and finding out why a particular way of technical stenting has to be done. That is something new that has never been published and something Mount Sinai will be the first one to show this is the way you can do it,” says Dr. Kini. “You need to be passionate and determined in whatever you are doing. I love my job, 24 hours are not enough. You probably need 36 hours to finish your work. But that is what keeps me going because I feel there is a lot to do, a lot to learn, and I’m determined still to achieve more.”
