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Vol. 19 No. 19
New faculty member Faxon will serve as Chief of Cardiology
Dr. David Faxon, a pioneer in the development of such nonsurgical techniques as angioplasty for restoring blood flow through clogged coronary arteries, and the current president-elect of the American Heart Association, has been appointed Chief of the Cardiology Section at the University Medical Center, effective July 1.Faxon, 55, joins the Chicago faculty as a Professor in Medicine. He comes from the University of Southern California, where he was a professor of medicine and chief of the division of cardiology at the Los Angeles County and USC Medical Center and University Hospital.
Faxon is best known for his basic and clinical research on new techniques for opening plaque-filled vessels that deliver blood to the heart muscle and on methods to prevent restenosis, the tendency for those vessels to close again after treatment. He currently is the principal investigator of a nationwide trial of intravascular radiation therapy to prevent the growth of new tissue into reopened blood vessels.
A native of Manchester, N.H., Faxon earned his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1967 and graduated from Boston University Medical School in 1971. He did his residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in cardiology at Boston University Hospital. He then taught at Boston University from 1976 to 1993, rising quickly from instructor to professor of medicine, director of interventional cardiology and acting chief of cardiology. After 17 years of teaching in Boston, he moved to USC in 1993 as professor of medicine and chief of cardiology.
The author or co-author of more than 135 articles in peer-reviewed journals, editor of three books and author of 20 book chapters, Faxon serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Circulation, the American Journal of Cardiology and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
He has served as an investigator and on the data and safety monitoring boards for many nationwide clinical trials of new cardiovascular therapies.
Faxon also has been a leader at the local and national level for the various heart-health organizations.
He has served as president of the Massachusetts and Los Angeles affiliates of the AHA and is currently a member of the associationās national board of directors and chairman of the AHA scientific publishing committee. He will begin a one-year term as president of the AHA in 2001.