Dr. Chikwe is Chairman of the Department of Cardiac Surgery and the Irina and George Schaeffer Distinguished Chair in Cardiac Surgery at Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles which is currently ranked by U.S. News and World Report among the top 3 programs nationally, thanks to deep expertise in heart and lung transplantation, structural heart, and robotic cardiac surgery.
Dr. Chikwe's clinical focus is robotic mitral valve repair. Editor-in-Chief of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Dr. Chikwe's research encompasses the interface between interventional and surgical therapies for valvular heart and coronary artery disease, with over 250 peer reviewed publications including contributions in The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
She is Principal Investigator of the NHLBI pivotal randomized trial of Percutaneous or surgical Repair In Mitral Prolapse And Regurgitation in patients >65 Years PRIMARY trial (NCT05051033) sponsored by the Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network.