Carl Tong, MD-PhD, FACC

Carl Tong took an unusual path to pursuit his passion of caring for heart failure patients as a physician-scientist. United States Air Force provided education of bachelor and master in electrical engineering. Experiences in the First Gulf War and a short-term summer mission to Honduras caused him to change career. GI Bill and Texas Hazelwood Act supported completion of a combined MD-PhD. Seeing a heart failure patient suffer caused him to pursuit cardiology and cardiovascular research. His extended cardiology fellowship at Wisconsin included cardiovascular disease, NIH-T32 research, and advanced heart failure/transplant cardiology.

As a physician – medical director, he helped to rescue a new heart transplant program and started a new left ventricular assist device program in Texas. As an associate professor and course director in Texas, he implemented active teaching encompassing hands-on/ears-on learning with robotic simulators, computer simulation of cardiovascular system, and hands-on introduction to bedside echocardiogram. As a scientist, he elucidated fundamental mechanisms that govern heart function (cross-bridge cooperative activation/de-activation modulates heart function independent of calcium) and developed new methods (using surface plasmon resonance to measure cross-bridge attachment/detachment within intact sarcomeres, simultaneous measurements of intra-cardiac pressure and intracellular calcium on intact beating mouse hearts, breath analyzer that measures cardiac output).

Dr. Tong continues passionate pursuit of finding better ways to treat heart failure patients as physician-scientist, including left ventricular assist device heart recovery, non-invasive monitoring devices, and development of new myofilament based approaches.